The Unending Nightmare
by Jorus C'baoth
Summary: Contains mostly original characters, set against the backdrop of an alternate Silent Hill, not connected to either the games or the movie. Uses game and movie characters, however.
1. Chapter 1

DAVID―AFTERNOON

The car was almost on empty.

David watched the road with one eye and the gas gauge with the other. Two weeks ago, Bill Materson called him with news―a missing persons. Missing persons cases were usually a lot of fun, and David was just waiting for another assignment.

He also couldn't shake off this dream he had had a few days ago. In the dream, he was running from something―something fast. Where ever he was was drenched in this thick fog, snow or something was falling all around him. The thing caught up with him and just dug him into the ground. After that, David had woken up and was virtually covered in his own sweat. Whether it had been a nightmare or a premonition was uncertain, especially where he was going.

The missing persons was in Silent Hill, a resort town on the southern edge of Toluca Lake. There was also small island in Toluca that had a couple of historic landmarks on it, but they weren't exactly important. Silent Hill had long since been abandoned after some kind of witch burning about a dozen years ago or something. The place was still a spook spot for teenagers and criminals. Not many people came back from Silent Hill. It wasn't something that David particularly daunted upon, but it did concern him now.

"Maybe the cops set up a barricade or something and I can't even get in," David said to himself. It was likely, Officer Bennet might even be there.

Brahms motorcycle cop Cybil Bennet. David had done an interview with her after she'd chased a kidnapper into Silent Hill. She'd kind of pushed him off, but had saved him an interview after she was off duty. David had had a kind of "crush", if an adult could call it that, on her ever since.

The turn off.

The next left and he would be in Silent Hill. He turned the steering wheel and the car followed suit. He kept on for the next few miles.

Damn. He was right.

The police had barricaded of the route to Silent Hill. David stopped the car and got out.

"Excuse me sir, you have to get back in your car and return home," the closest police officer to him said.

"My name is David Oliver, I'm with the Toronto Times."

"I'm sorry sir. I know you must have driven a long way to get here, but you have to return home."

"Christ. I drive here and spend over a hundred American dollars and I'm told to go home? Bill Materson of the Ashfield Chronicle called me."

"Mr. Materson should keep to his own business," a voice called from behind him. David turned around to see a man, about his height, standing next to a Toluca County police car, "name's Gucci, Tom Gucci."

"David Oliver. You're with Toluca County police?"

"That's right. Hell of a lot closer than Toronto."

"I used to be from around here. Listen, you know a Brahms Police officer named Cybil Bennet?"

Gucci took a hard look at him, "Officer Bennet died some years back."

David couldn't believe it. Cybil had seemed competent enough to keep her fine looking ass out the fire, what killed her?

"That's unfortunate. Listen, can I use a phone?" David asked Gucci.

"Sure. Who're you calling?"

"Bill."

Gucci reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cell phone, "Here."

David dialed the number that Bill had given during that call a couple of weeks ago. A female voice answered, "Ashfield Chronicle, how may we help you?"

"I need to talk to Bill Materson."

"Who should I say is calling?"

"Dave Oliver."

"Hold on a minute sir."

There was a long moment of silence, and then Bill's gruff voice came over, "Davey boy! What the hell do you want?"

"That Silent Hill thing you gave me a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh! The cops cordoned off the area a few days ago. I couldn't get a hold of you to tell you."

"I've been on the road for a few days."

"Yeah. Maybe Toronto ain't exactly the place for you."

"I've been saying that for days now. Listen. I'm coming up there. You gonna be at work or home?"

"Home. The apartment complex across from the Chronicle."

"Okay, hold on," he covered the speaker with his hand, "How far from here is Ashfield?" he asked Gucci.

"'Bout half a day's drive. You can camp out here if you need to."

He uncovered the speaker, "What about tomorrow? I don't have any gas."

"Okay. I'll still be at home. See ya then."

"Bye Bill." he hung up the phone. David handed the phone back to Gucci.

"You can't go past the police line. I'll be back in the morning to pick you up."

"Thank you officer," David said in his sincerest voice, and then sat down in the driver's seat of his car. Gucci went back to his own and pulled out, driving away.

_Fuck_, thought David as he started to nod asleep.

DAVID―EVENING

Something jolted David awake.

For a moment, he thought he had been hit, but remembered he was at the barricade to Silent Hill. Something was wrong though…

The cop cars that were in front of him were gone now. Not only that, but David's own SUV lights were on when he remembered shutting the engine off. David got out of his SUV and walked forward a little. A handgun was on the ground in front of the SUV, the headlights were almost centering on it, "Okay, creepy as hell."

David picked the gun up and checked it for ammo like Cybil had taught him years ago. He'd had no formal training in way of guns, but Cybil had told him that some of the basic ways to ready one. He slid the clip of the weapon back in, pulling back the slide and chambering a bullet. He checked to see if the safety was off. It was.

One last look around and he ventured forward, towards the Silent Hill city limits. David kept the gun in a ready position, holding it with two hands and keeping it close to his right shoulder.

_This is goddamn bullshit…_ he thought as he moved on.

There was a sign to his right as he walked forward. It read: SILENT HILL FAST ROAD TO HELL. Wait, that didn't seem right. Fast road to Hell? He took a more careful look at the sign. HILL FAST ROAD TO REDEMPTION. It hadn't said _that_a minute ago. ENT HILL SLOW ROAD TO FREEDOM, FAST ROAD TO DEATH.

"Wait a goddamn minute here…" David said to himself. The sign was changing every time he read it.

_This ain't fuckin' natural… What the hell is going on here?_

Whatever it was, cops had gone missing, somebody started his car without starting the engine, and it felt as if somebody was watching him everywhere he went since he had woken up.

David continued walking, coming to the rest stop that was just before the city limits. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary here, but after that sign thing, he wanted to be sure.

David walked inside the rest stop building, keeping the weapon pointed forward. As he stepped inside the Men's Room, he stopped, he could smell something lingering from the room. The smell was making him want to gag. He walked toward the stalls, opening the first one. Nothing was inside stall number one. He checked the next one, nothing. The third and final stall wouldn't open. David kicked at it. It opened after the third kick, and a strong smell flew out the stall at him. He had to hold his nose to keep from smell it, and he ran for the urinal closest to him to puke. After a few minutes, he took another look in stall three. Whatever made that horrid shit-smell was nowhere to be seen, and stall three was the cleanest in the room. _Holy shit… I puke because it's normal._Figured. He'd somehow become used to the strangeness of the place in less than fifteen minutes.

He didn't bother to check the Women's Room, in the off chance that somebody would find him (though the honest to God chances of _that_were slim to none). He left the rest stop building. Outside something had changed. A blue car was sitting in the parking space nearest the rest stop building. David hadn't heard any car nor had anyone come into the rest stop building. Maybe he just hadn't noticed it when he arrived a few minutes ago, but he was sure that the parking spots were all empty when he got there… He checked the car. No keys, but there was a map of Silent Hill in the passenger seat. He took it, folded it, and put it in his back left jeans pocket. He checked in the glove compartment, nothing but a flashlight. He grabbed the flashlight, chances were that Silent Hill had been devoid of power for the last forty or fifty years.

David spotted a small set of wooden stairs about twenty feet away. He walked toward them, again keeping the gun ready near his shoulder. He walked down the stairs and into the forest just outside of town. He was in the city limits now. He walked forward, nearing a small graveyard. Next to the graveyard was a house or a church, and a small man made pond. David looked at several of the gravestones.

RICHARD BACHMAN-DAVID SLOGGAN-HARRY MORRIS-MARY SUNDERLAND

Not many of those names sounded familiar. David continued on, walking through the other gate and into another part of the woods. He heard a loud noise up ahead, growing in loudness as he got closer and closer. When he got to where it seem the sound originated from, it stopped.

_Creepy as hell…_

The body of a man was on the ground in front of him. From the looks of it, the guy had been chewed on or something. That weird noise was still coming from somewhere around the corpse. David kneeled down next to the corpse, checking the wounds.

_Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!_ Had David heard the massive foot steps, he wouldn't have cared. It was the scraping noise that scared the hell out of him. David looked up at―

―at the large person walking toward him, dragging a great big knife.

He, at least it looked like a he, was at least seven feet tall, muscular, and looked to be covered in blood. He was wearing a butcher's apron, it looked like, and had on his head a helmet that was pyramid shaped in design and looked as painful to wear as it would have been for David to lift. The guy had some kind of twisted familiarity to him, as if David had seen him before and in a similar setting, but David had never been in a place so foggy and dark that this couldn't be more false.

The red pyramid headed guy took his knife by both hands and lifted it, swinging it over his head and onto the corpse in front of David. The knife cut the corpse from the right shoulder down to the waist, neatly bisecting it. _Oh shit_, David thought as he fell backwards in both shock and reflex. Pyramid Head's knife was stuck to the ground, and the corpse. Pyramid Head struggled in lifting it up, which he did. He swung it down again and David scrambled backwards, trying to get away from the big butcher.

_The gun!_ shouted something in the back of David's mind, but that didn't resonate very well against his survival instincts, which told him to get the hell away from this guy. David scrambled up, running at the same time. He ran back to the cemetery house.

"What the hell…" he gasped, out of breath. A big gate was stopping him from entering the cemetery grounds. It was different from the gate that was there about twenty minutes ago. It was fifty feet high, looked to be covered in flesh.

"Shit…" Pyramid Head was almost close to him. David looked hurriedly back and forth, the scraping coming closer and closer by the second. _Think goddamn it, think!_

Seconds passed. Nothing. The scraping grew distant, Pyramid Head was gone. David gasped for breath every second or two.

"Fuck…" Whatever the hell was going on in Silent Hill had just drug him into it; and though his common sense told him to leave, he didn't want to. Something weirder than a Stephen King novel was happening here, and he wanted to be the first reporter to know the whole story.

ELIZABETH―EVENING

Elizabeth Johnston knew the streets of Silent Hill like the back of her hand. Unfortunately, that didn't include when some strange-ass creature was bearing down on her.

It was big, probably seven-foot-three or something. And it was weird looking. It had a face that looked like some kind of insect/dog hybrid. It had six arms, three on each side. It was also chasing Elizabeth.

Elizabeth ran down Katz and took the corner onto Lindsey. She couldn't see past the fog, which limited her vision to about a half foot. She tripped on a manhole cover that was partially open. The creature was almost on her. She pulled the pepper spray out of her pocket and waited for it to chomp on her. She was scared for her life.

Nothing happened.

Elizabeth looked back.

There was nothing there.

She looked around at the fog-drenched city she was standing in. She didn't know what the hell had happened to Silent Hill, but whatever it was was creeping the hell out of her.

Elizabeth and her family had migrated to Toluca County when she was three, so this was the only place she ever remembered living in. They lived in Brahms, not twenty minutes walk from Silent Hill. When she was five, she and her friend Billy snuck into the town by hopping a disregarded barricade. They looked around Silent Hill for what must have been hours before the cops found them.

Of course, she and Billy didn't exactly want to talk much when the cops did find them.

Ten or so minutes before the cops found them, some guy wandered into the town and told them to follow him. Elizabeth and Billy weren't exactly stupid and didn't talk to the guy, but they followed him, keeping a few feet behind. The guy seemed really weird. First, he started talking about how he could see monsters, which Elizabeth and Billy couldn't see. Then he pulled out a knife and started to swing it at nothing but the air. Billy and Elizabeth obviously stepped back even farther after that. Then the guy found one of those mine shafts that was abandoned after the Civil War. He jumped down inside of it.

Seemed that he was right about the monsters.

"No!" Elizabeth muttered to herself, "I don't wanna think about that now. Right now, I gotta find a way outta this place."

Elizabeth walked toward a house that was thirty or so feet in front of her. She walked up to the window and looked inside. Nothing. Nobody.

"Excuse me, miss," the guy's voice scared the living hell out of her, she almost jumped out of her skin, which now seemed possible in Silent Hill given the thing that was just chasing her.

Elizabeth turned around and saw a guy who looked to be in his mid-to-late-thirties standing behind her. He was wearing a Colts sweater and blue jeans. He had a Jack Daniels Beer hat turned backwards on his head. He had a moustache, partial beard, and creeped the hell out of her.

"Sorry," she said, trying not to sound scared, "were you talking to me?" that was a dumb question to ask, there were no other people, let alone teenage girls, around them.

"Yes, I was. Do you happen to know where I can find a Heather Coleman?"

"No, never heard of her."

"Dammit. Thanks," the guy just wandered off. Oblivious to the fog around him.

_Creepy_, she thought, _I get chased by some fucking insect/dog and he asks me if I've seen someone._

Elizabeth sat down on the porch to the house. She hugged her legs to her chest and just sat there. It was colder than the depths of Hell (Elizabeth didn't quite understand that sentiment, because people usually associated _fire_with Hell, and fire was hot).

Before today, Elizabeth probably wouldn't have thought something like this could have happened, or even existed. She was sitting down at her desk in Richmond High School in Brahms. She was thinking about calling Billy, who had just recently been admitted to the mental institute in Ashfield after having strange delusions. Kristen, one of the girls she absolutely loathed because of her impulsively preppy attitude, had walked up to her and asked her to do something.

Sounded easy enough. Elizabeth had stayed there plenty of times before when she wanted to get away from the continuing feud of her parents and paycheck money. But when she got to Silent Hill, several things went wrong. One, the cops had barricaded off every entrance into town, meaning that she'd have to hop a fence that _wasn't_on the Toluca Lake side of town. Two, the cops were continually _checking_the fences that weren't on the Toluca Lake side of town, so she had to hop one when they weren't looking. And last but, oh so not least, some weird-ass fog had settled over the town that apparently couldn't be seen from outside the city limits. Now, had the fog been on the interior of the town, Elizabeth could understand not seeing it. But it had started fucking with her vision the second she got down from the fence that she hopped to get into town.

Back to the present, Elizabeth stood up again. At some point the goose bumps on her arms had gone away, so she wasn't cold anymore. Not that the cold bothered her, but there was something about this cold. It hit her almost immediately after the fog hit her when she jumped the fence.

"When I get out of here, the _second_that Kristen calls me "John-Girl", I'm gonna punch her."

DAVID―EVENING

David sat down on a bench the second he found one. Pyramid Head was gone with absolutely _no_traces of even existing. Whatever Pyramid Head was, he had a goddamn triangular helmet on, would it be that easy for him to disappear? Apparently.

David smacked himself with the handgrip of the gun a few times. He couldn't believe what he had seen back there. Pyramid Head, the flesh-gate, the Sign-That-Wouldn't-Stop-Changing, the missing cops.

_Speaking of missing cops…_

What the hell happened to Cybil? Something here, in Silent Hill? Hell, maybe it was just some normal punk with a gun or with a Molotov Cocktail or something, it didn't _have_to be something in Silent Hill.

David stood up. He squinted to look at the street sign not four feet away. It said Lindsey street. He started toward it and turned onto the street. He didn't go about ten feet before he collided with a teenaged girl. They both fell in opposite directions, like something you'd see on a damn sitcom when people run into each other. David instinctively stood up and offered her a hand.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Other than being literally hit on by somebody, yeah," she said as she took his hand and stood up.

"I'm Dave, who are you?"

"Elizabeth. Or, my incredibly hated nickname is "John-Girl", but I suggest you don't call me that."

"Okay. Fair enough. What are you doing here?"

"Pissing off a classmate. You?"

"Looking for somebody."

"You a cop?"

"No, I'm a reporter. From Canada."

"Canada? I knew the local news guys were pussies, but I didn't think they'd bring in somebody from Canada. People around here hate Canadians as much as they do the French."

_That_ kind of hit him close to home. But then he remembered that whenever somebody had to place blame on something, they chose Canada or France.

"Funny," he said, "Canadians usually blame the Americans."

On that, she laughed. This Elizabeth girl seemed like somebody who was easily humored.

They started walking down Lindsey, the way Elizabeth was going in the first place.

"So, pissing off a classmate. That something that teenage girls do often?"

"Only me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm usually the odd person out."

"Sad."

"Why's that?"

"Because, you seem like a normal girl."

"That's because I am a normal girl. I think, I don't know, does wearing skirts or ass-loads of make-up make somebody a normal girl? Because if so, then I'm not a normal girl."

"Oh."

"Do you have a daughter?"

"Never been married. At least to a person, anyway. People say I'm married to my work."

"Everybody says that to people over thirty."

"You mean, everybody your age?"

"To me, that's usually everybody. So, who's the missing person?"

"Bob Johnston."

She stopped after that. David stopped to. She had a look of concern on her face.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Bob Johnston is my dad."

That made the "John-Girl" nickname clear, but wouldn't she know if her own father was missing? How long had she been in Silent Hill?

"How long has he been missing?" she asked.

"My friend at the Ashfield Chronicle called me up about it a couple of weeks ago, then I hit the road to come here."

"But, I saw him before I went to school today. He was fine, at home, in Brahms."

That didn't make any sense.

"Could it have been another Bob Johnston?"

"No. My family is the only one with the name 'Johnston' in Toluca County."

"Maybe an out-of-towner?"

David himself knew _that_couldn't be it. Out-of-towners usually went unidentified, and usually were never reported missing.

"I don't know. Maybe I should give my house a call."

She pulled a cell phone out of her pants pocket and dialed her home number. Seconds later, Elizabeth pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the display. Something was wrong.

"What is it?"

"No signal. Just this strange noise."

It was then that David had heard the shuffling of feet not five feet away from where they were standing. The problem, it was coming from all directions. Elizabeth must have heard it too, because she put her phone down and was looking from side to side, just like he was. David pulled the gun out from his belt where he stuck it earlier. Elizabeth must have been surprised to see it, she looked at it in shock. David brought the gun up to his shoulder in a readying position. The static that was coming from Elizabeth's phone had gotten loud enough that David could hear it.

Then the creature came into view.

It was Elizabeth's height, maybe an inch taller. Its head, if one could call it that, was shaking violently from side to side, and looked like a small stub. It had one arm, but that one arm was as long as two of them stuck together end to end. Its height was actually closer to David's own, now that he could see it clearly, the creature was hunched over. Its arm was dragging behind it. It opened its "mouth" if one could call it that, as it was about an inch wide, and let out an earsplitting scream that made David and Elizabeth cover their ears.

David let go of his head and started to shoot at it. He put bullets into its chest, each opening a hole that started to close about as soon as it opened. _Oh shit_, he thought as the creature let out another of its screams. He kept firing the gun at it until the clip went empty.

_Oh fuck._

"Time to run," he said, grabbing Elizabeth's hand and pulling her along with him.

ELIZABETH―EVENING

"Okay, okay, stop…" Elizabeth said, out of breath from running so damn much. She fell to her knees kept puffing out breaths every second or so. David also tried catching his breath.

"You don't have anymore bullets for that thing?"

"No."

"Damn."

Elizabeth tried to stand up, but she just fell back down again.

_Damn it_, she thought, _I decide to let some stupid bitch get to me with a stupid ass nickname, and I get caught in _Shop of Horrors_ with a Canadian guy._

Well, she didn't know if he was Canadian, but it pretty much seemed so. And, as for the stupid bitch, Elizabeth was definitely gonna punch Kristen whether she called her "John-Girl" or not.

That was kind of funny. In movies, all the time, you see girls getting along with other girls and afraid to talk to boys. Elizabeth was just the opposite-she could talk to _any_guy, but girls pretty much made her sick.

"You okay?" David asked her.

"Yeah."

She had caught her breath, and stood up. She remembered the house that the mustached guy found her at. They weren't that far from it.

"C'mon. There's a house a little bit away from here."

"You sure?" he asked.

"I know Silent Hill like I know my own house. It's just right over there," she pointed at it.

For the hundredth time since she got into town, she was pissed at herself for not bringing a sweater or a jacket. Just wearing blue jeans and a "Don't F*** With Me" T-Shirt (it was censored because her parents wouldn't let her buy the one that actually said 'Fuck') was kind of stupid. But she hadn't known that it would be this cold in town.

She started walking toward the house, David followed her.

The door to the house was unlocked, which seemed kind of strange. As they walked in, Elizabeth noticed something strange about the house. It seemed like it had been used recently, but that no human had used it. There were claw marks on the sofa that took up the wall of the room opposite the door. Next to that were stairs. There was a large hole in the wall of the kitchen.

"What happened here?" David asked as he walked past her.

"I don't know. When I looked inside here earlier, it didn't look like this."

"Well, we'll hole up here for a little while. There's bound to be some stuff we can use."

"Right."

Elizabeth started upstairs, feeling a little bit like a kid going into a haunted house.

_This place _is_ a haunted house, dumbass._That thought entered and exited her brain quickly.

There were three bedrooms upstairs. One looked to be for a seven year old boy, another for a pair of parents, and the last for a teenaged boy. Looking at the teenaged boy's room, it reminded her of her own.

"Wow, creepy."

Elizabeth had a little sister, but the little boy's room didn't look anything like it. And the parent's room didn't look like her parent's room. Why did this room look like hers?

_Oh, well, might as well look for some clothes that fit me._

Now _that _a thought.

She started to dig through the dresser. She found a pair of pants that looked like they'd fit her, so she tried them on. Then she found a T-shirt that _wasn't _in sweat, like her own, and put it on. She took a look at herself in the mirror.

"Wow, I wonder if the guy that lived here looked like me."

"Elizabeth!" David called after her.

"Right," she said, then she yelled down at David, "be right down!"

Elizabeth walked over to the closet and opened it. Inside she found something she didn't expect, even from a teenaged boy.

A shotgun.

She, slowly, grabbed a jacket and put it on. Then she grabbed the shotgun. It was heavy, but she'd never held a gun before, so that was expected. Next to where it was was a box of shotgun shells. She picked them up and put them in the jacket pocket.

_Well, I've got something to give to David._ She was relieved at that.

"What took you so long?" David asked as she came down the stairs.

"Found somethin' for ya'!" Elizabeth practically shouted when she hit the last step.

When David took the shotgun, he looked like he'd found God or something. She pulled the shells out of the jacket pocket and handed them to him.

"Where'd you find this?"

"In a closet."

"Damn… C'mon, I found something on the table there," he pulled out a piece of paper.

"What?"

"We need to go to this hospital. It's called Brookhaven."

"I know where that is. We need to go west from here to get there."

David handed her the piece of paper. She read it.

**Of course, if I hadn't told him about it, he would never have gone there. Please, help Stanley, Doctor Truman. Brookhaven is the best medical facility in all of Silent Hill. Please Doctor Truman, help our son.**

That was it.

"Wow."

"Maybe this Stanley guy will know something. C'mon."

Elizabeth folded up the piece of paper and put it in the jacket pocket.

_Was Stanley the little boy, or the teenaged boy?_ She wondered.

Whatever Stanley had done, she might be wearing his clothes.

STANLEY―EVENING

Stanley Coleman sat on a bench in Rosewater Park. He looked at the body lying in front of him.

_It was the right thing to do…_

Heather wasn't worthy of the happiness he found. But, she was his wife, she was the one he loved. No! She wasn't worth it. She was a whore, just like everyone else. Like his mother, his aunt, and everyone else.

"Why can't I decide?"

He took off his hat and threw it to the ground. He took another look at his wife's body. The knife in her torso was sticking straight up. He had used it to cut her across the most magnificent places. Across the breasts. Beside, under, and back around her vagina. Every place that he could have given her pleasure was desecrated and dismembered.

Of course, he had given her pleasure, even after killing her.

Stanley stood up, picking up his hat and walking off, leaving the corpse of his wife in the park. He started walking down Nathan Avenue. When he got to Pete's Bowl 'o' Rama, he looked down the street. He knew what was down there. First was a strip club called Heaven's Night, then there was Brookhaven.

Brookhaven, where he'd spent most of his teenage years.

Brookhaven, where he'd met Heather.

Brookhaven, where they told him he was insane for killing his little brother.

Brookhaven, where he found true happiness for the first time, killing Director Adams.

Brookhaven, where his wife told him he was insane.

Brookhaven, where he got the knife that he used to kill Heather.

He started walking toward it. It was calling him.

He remembered when he was admitted, all those years ago. He was put in a room, next to a little girl named Alessa. When the nurse, Heather, came to see him for the first time, he asked for clay. He made Heather a doll, she loved it. He made another for Alessa. Then, he made a doll for every nurse in the hospital. Director Adams had come into his room one day, and asked him why he made those dolls.

STANLEY'S MEMORY

"_You know why you're here, are you looking for redemption by making them?"_

"_Redemption? Why would I want that? I like making dolls."_

"_But you murdered your brother."_

"_Murder? Is that what it's called when you try to relieve someone of pain?"_

"_You gave him pain, you know that?"_

"_What do you mean? He hated living, he'd said so himself. I just helped him go beyond, helped him get away from his pain."_

"_You separated every part of him. You took out his bones. I don't get how he was still alive when you took out his heart."_

"_I was helping him," I said, taking the sculpting knife in hand, "he wanted to get away from it all. Why doesn't anyone understand that?"_

_Director Adams took a step toward me. I pulled the knife to my side. I stood up._

"_Why don't you people understand that?!" I dug the knife into Director Adams. He grasped my shoulder. I pulled the knife out of him, and stuck it into his chest. I didn't blink when I cut his eyes from his skull. I didn't feel it when they used tasers on me. I didn't know what was happening to my physical body, but I could feel my pain going away each and every time I put that knife into Director Adams. I could feel happiness. Alessa was standing there, watching. She knew what it felt like. She knew how happy I was._

STANLEY―EVENING

He snapped out of his memory. He had walked to Brookhaven and stopped in front of it. Of course. The damned place won't let him go. He walked inside of it, stopping right after the door closed behind him.

_I don't have to stay here longer. Do I?_

He didn't know. All he knew was that there was something left for him in this building, maybe something important, something related to Heather, but, he had just killed Heather. Didn't he? He certainly remembered killing Heather. He stuck his knife into her, the same knife he used years before to kill Director Adams. But why did he think that something relating to Heather was here, when he would have found it with her earlier, when she was with him.

But, if he _had _back here with Heather, why was he here again? And did he really kill Heather? He seemed to think that he had, but why would he do that? He loved Heather, or did he?

Stanley grabbed his head and sat down on his knees.

_What the hell is happening to me? Did I or didn't I kill Heather?_

_Why don't you come ask me?_

Who was this voice in his head?

_It's me, Stanley._

Who?

_Me, Stanley. Alessa._

What? Alessa? But she died. But she was in his head. But she was _dead._

_No, Stanley. I'm alive, inside of you. I loved you, Stanley, but you had feelings for Heather._

"You killed Heather?"

_No, Stanley. You did. For me. She didn't love you, Stanley. I did. She wanted to leave you at Brookhaven. She _hated_ you._

"But I loved her, she said she did too."

_No, Stanley. She hated you. You're letting your insanity take over your brain. Let me help you, Stanley, let me help you like you did your brother._

"My brother? Stephen?"

_Yes. You and I are the only ones that know you were helping him._

"But how could you know that?"

_I've known that, Stanley. I've been with you for a long time. I've loved you for a long time. You don't have to tell me anything, Stanley. I know everything you've done to help mankind. Everything you've done to help the ones you love. You've done so much to help your family. Like when you helped your parents._

"My parents?" he couldn't really remember doing anything to help them.

_Find me, Stanley. You know where I am._

"Room S4?"

_Yes, Stanley. I'm there. Come to me, Stanley. Please._

"Yes, Alessa. I'll come to you."

He got up and walked to the stairs. S4 was on the third floor. He walked up the stairs, not stopping at all.

He got to the third floor.

He opened the door. In front of him, there was the door to the Mental Wing. He opened the door.

But it didn't follow suit.

Why?

"Open dammit!"

The door still didn't open.

Then he remembered, the door was code-locked.

_What's wrong, Stanley?_

"The door is locked, Alessa. I don't know the code."

_Why would they lock me in here?_

"They locked the door to the entire wing, I can't go to any of the rooms."

_Hurry, Stanley. I need to get out of this room._

"I'll get you out of there, don't worry, Alessa."

He turned around and started back down the stairs. He would get Alessa out of that room, if it was the last thing he did.

ELIZABETH―TWELVE YEARS AGO

"C'mon, Lizzy!" Billy shouted out to her, "You're not scared, are ya?"

"No."

Elizabeth ran after Billy. She didn't want to be left behind. Billy stopped at a barricade.

"What'sa matter?" she asked.

"Nothin', just lookin' for cops."

Billy started to climb up the barricade. He stopped after he landed on the ground.

"Hurry up, Lizzy!"

"Keep your pants on!"

Elizabeth started to climb up the barricade. When she got to the other side, Billy started to run into the town.

_God, can't he wait? I'm not a darn track runner like he is._

Well, Billy wasn't _really_a track runner, but he probably would be one when he gets older. Right now, they were just starting kindergarten.

Silent Hill had a whole bunch of scary stories. People said there were ghosts, monsters, demons, even evil clowns. Apparently, people had read too many horror books.

Now, Billy and Elizabeth were going to Silent Hill to see if this was all true. Now, if it all _was_true, this would probably be the end of Elizabeth Johnston and Billy Harrison.

"Lizzy! Come here!"

Elizabeth ran to where Billy was, and saw what she didn't think could happen in any other town in the world―

―it was completely _normal_.

"Wow, Billy. There's nobody here."

"Yeah. Wonder where everybody went."

"There was a witch burning here about twenty years ago."

"But how could everybody die?"

"The fire got out of control?"

Billy continued forward, into Silent Hill.

ELIZABETH―THAT MORNING

_Wonder how Billy's doing…_ Elizabeth thought.

She sat up from her desk and walked over to the chalkboard.

"Mrs. Wolff is probably gonna kick my ass for drawing on the chalkboard, but I don't care."

After about five minutes, the picture on the chalkboard was about as big as the chalkboard. Something was strange about it. It looked kind of insectoid, had a partial dog head, and had like, six arms.

_What the hell is this thing?_

She erased it and started back for her desk.

Billy Harrison, her childhood friend, had just been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Ashfield, which was neighboring Silent Hill. Brahms was closer, but had no psychiatric hospital, and Silent Hill was off limits to _anybody_, even the cops wouldn't go in there. Unless somebody kidnapped somebody and took them into Silent Hill.

Billy had called her just the other day. He sounded weird.

"_Liz, I need your help…"_

"_Billy? What happened to you? What do you need?"_

"_I need to get back to Silent Hill. Something strange is going on, I need to get there!"_

"_Whoa… Billy, calm down, okay. Lizzy's here. What happened? Why do you need to go back to Silent Hill?"_

"Something is there, Liz, I need to go back there, I have_ to go back!"_

"_Billy, calm down, please? Calm down for Liz, okay?"_

"_Sorry, I just need a minute. I'm okay, really. But I have to go back to Silent Hill. My parents won't let me out of the house, I couldn't even go to school today."_

"_Well, maybe you should just stay inside. Get some sleep, okay Billy?"_

"_I can't sleep. Every time I try, I have strange nightmares about creatures that are seven feet tall. One of them had six arms, one had a huge sword or knife or something. Liz, I think Silent Hill did this to me."_

"_Have you been there recently?"_

"_No, not since we went there together years ago. What about you? Have you been there recently? Have you been having dreams?"_

"_I went there a few weeks ago, to get away from my parents arguing, but I didn't go into the town itself. And I don't think I've had any weird dreams about monsters or anything. Billy, how 'bout you ask your parents if you can come over to my place? We'll just stay up all night and watch zombie movies, like we used to."_

"My mom won't let me leave. My dad won't even talk to me. And I don't think I could watch a zombie movie without thinking about those things_ in my nightmares. Could you try to come over here? My parents will let me see people, they just won't let me leave."_

"_I'll try. Bye, Billy. I'll try coming over tomorrow."_

"_Thank you, Liz. Bye."_

She did go to Billy's house, but nobody was there, not even Billy.

She looked up at the chalkboard. The drawing came back. That was weird. She was sure she erased it. Did she? Elizabeth took a long look at it.

_Six arms. Just like Billy's nightmare thing_.

She was sure that it didn't have a big sword or knife, but it did have six arms. Was whatever happened to Billy, happening to her? What _did_happen to Billy? What had Silent Hill done to him?

"Hey, John-Girl."

Elizabeth looked up and saw Kristen Navarro standing in the doorway. Kristen was a typical movie blonde. Short skirt, lots of make-up, trying to show a small hint her breasts off to every guy she thinks is hot. She made Elizabeth sick. And she kept calling her "John-Girl", just because her last name was Johnston.

"What, Kristen? Here to bitch at me because I don't act like you and your prissy friends?"

"Well, now that you mention it, maybe I will. But I did want to tell you that my "prissy" friends and I found out that you've been to Silent Hill."

"What of it? I was five."

"We _also_heard that there are ghosts in Silent Hill."

"There aren't any ghosts in Silent Hill."

"Oh yeah? Is that why your boyfriend Billy is in a nut house?"

Elizabeth went defensive on that.

"Don't talk about Billy like that! I don't know what's wrong with him, but _don't _about him like that!"

"Oooooh! So you care about the nut job."

Elizabeth was ready to punch Kristen.

"Billy's been my friend for as long as I can remember, so stop talking about him like that. I don't care if you call him my boyfriend, but stop talking about him like he's nuts, okay, Kristen?"

"Fine, John-Girl, but I'll tell ya what. Go spend a day at Silent Hill and bring back _proof_that there aren't any ghosts, and I'll stop talking about how your boyfriend Billy is nuts. Not like it matters though, everybody in school knows he's crazy."

Suddenly, it felt like a big hand was crushing Elizabeth. _Everybody_in the school knows that Billy's in a mental building? God, could this week get weirder?

"Okay, Kristen. I'll do it. I'll go to Silent Hill tonight, right after school. But I want you to keep your word. When I come back, you need to shut the fuck up about Billy, got that?"

"Fine. But I think you should change that _when_you come back to _if_you come back."

Elizabeth spent the rest of the day hearing people try to whisper things about Billy. She heard it all from _"That's the girl who likes the nutcase!" "She's dating a nut? Wow, guess you just don't know people, huh? I would have figured her for a normal girl."_It got tiresome, but that was just what _every_girl did when they heard a piece of gossip. Well, every girl except Elizabeth.

_Every girl on Earth should be shown what it's like to have a friend in a nut house, then maybe they'll shut up about me and Billy._

Maybe.

BILLY―AROUND MIDNIGHT

Billy Harrison was bored.

He sat in his nicely padded room, in his nicely tight straight jacket. All because people thought he was insane.

_Damn them all. Damn _all_ of them. Damn my parents. Damn the doctors. Damn Lizzy―_. _No, don't damn Lizzy._

Lizzy was the only one that actually wanted to help Billy.

"William."

The voice came from the door. He stood up. It was Doctor Muldoon.

"What do you want?"

"I'd like to talk to you, William."

"I don't want to talk. Especially not to you."

"I'm coming in, William. Please, talk with me."

The door opened. Muldoon walked in. Billy sat back down on the nicely padded floor. Muldoon sat down in front of him.

"How are you, William?"

"As good as anybody who was accused of being insane can be. We've talked for two days straight, you _know_I'm not insane. Let me out of here. Lizzy probably thinks I'm dead now."

"Lizzy… You've mentioned her before. Who is she?"

Billy found himself drawn into talking with Muldoon.

"She's my friend. She's the only person who wanted to help me after I started having these nightmares."

"That's not true. I wanted to help you. Your parents wanted to help you."

"My parents locked me in my bedroom. And all _you've_done is lock me in here and pretend to actually give a shit what I do and don't say. Lizzy is the only one who wanted to help me, and I miss her."

"We could arrange for her to visit you. What is her full name?"

"Elizabeth Kara Johnston. Just like it says on my list of contacts that my parents gave you."

"We'll call her up now," he retrieved a cell phone from his pocket. He flipped over a few papers on his clipboard and started scanning for Lizzy's phone number. He dialed it, "Hello, Mrs. Johnston? My name is Herman Muldoon, I'm a psychiatrist. No, no, I'm not calling to ask if your daughter is crazy. I would like to ask if your daughter could come here, to Ashfield, to see William Harrison. Which daughter? Oh, yes, Elizabeth. Oh, really? I'm sorry. Thank you," he put the phone back in his pocket.

"Well? Is she coming?"

"Elizabeth hasn't come home from school yet. No one has seen her since this morning."

"What? What could have happened?!" Billy stood up, Muldoon waved his hands in a sit down motion.

"Please, William, sit down."

"I don't want to sit down! I want to know what the hell happened to Lizzy!" Muldoon stood up, he put his hands on Billy's shoulders.

"Please, William, calm down. I'm sure she'll be back tomorrow, and we'll try again. All right?"

Billy knew where she was. He could feel it. _Silent Hill._

"You need to let me out of this place, now."

"William, you know we can't do that."

"No, dammit! I know where she is! She's in Silent Hill! Whatever is happening to me must have started happening to her…you have to let me go there, _now_!"

"William, no one is in Silent Hill. It has been barricaded off and no one could get in."

"It was barricaded twelve years ago and we still got in then, I need to go there! Whatever is happening to us can be solved _there_!"

"William, I can't let you go."

Billy noticed the door was still open. He formulated a plan.

"Then get the fuck out of my way."

Billy head butted Muldoon. He ran. People got out of his way. Suddenly, arms grabbed him, just in front of the door. Dammit!

"Let me go!" the arms wouldn't let go.

"Let me _go_, dammit!"

"Son, I'm not letting you go until you calm down."

He did. He looked at the man who was holding him.

"You Billy Harrison?"

"Yeah, and I need to go to―"

"Silent Hill."

Billy was shocked that the man knew where he needed to go.

"I'm officer Tom Gucci. I'm investigating a series of missing persons cases in the county and Elizabeth Johnston and her father have been reported missing."

"What?"

"Elizabeth was reported missing this morning and her father was reported missing about two weeks ago."

"But, her dad answered the phone when I called two days ago. Please, let me help you find them."

"I'm willing to do that. I need somebody who knows Silent Hill and you are the only one who _isn't_a missing person that does. I'm gonna have somebody let you out of that jacket and we can leave right away."

"Thank you."

One of the attendees walked over to Billy. At first, he had taken a slightly defensive position, then let the attendee take the straight jacket off of him. It felt good to be out of that goddamn thing.

"Okay, Billy, can I call you Billy?"

"Yeah."

"Where is the first place that Elizabeth would go in Silent Hill?"

"Brookhaven. We spent a lot of time in Brookhaven."

"All right. Let's go."

Gucci led Billy out to his car. The moon was brighter than he remembered, but he hadn't left that hospital for two days.

_Lizzy, I hope you're okay. I hope those nightmares didn't get the better of you, like they did me._

Maybe he was crazy, but right now, he needed to help Lizzy.

DAVID―AROUND MIDNIGHT

Elizabeth was sick.

David held her in his arms while he looked for a _not_filth covered room in Brookhaven hospital. She had started to walk funny, and then just fell down. David checked her forehead, she had a fever like none he had ever seen.

_Teenagers. They don't give a damn about the adults they scare when they get sick._

She had been telling him about when she was here twelve years ago, with her friend Billy. David remembered reading a local newspaper when he stopped for a bite to eat in Brahms yesterday about a teenaged boy named William Harrison who had been admitted to Ashfield Psychiatric Retreat, just near the Hope House on the outskirts of Ashfield. A second Hope House was on the outskirts of Silent Hill, but David didn't have any intentions of going there.

"Finally, damn," he had found a room, labeled S4 on the third floor. It looked like a little girl's bedroom, which would probably suit Elizabeth just fine. He set her down on the bed and sat down in a chair next to her.

For a few minutes, Elizabeth just laid there, looking like a sleeping baby. She finally woke up. She opened her eyes slowly, as if she didn't want to come out of her twenty minute coma. She slowly sat up.

"What happened?"

"You fell down. I carried you up three stories and put you in this bed."

"Thanks. I guess this place just kinda got to me."

David rigged the shotgun to a belt that he found in the house and had it slung over his shoulder. He pulled it off and set it down.

"I'm sorry if I scared you."

"Naw, it's okay. I just didn't think a small kid like you'd be so damn heavy."

Elizabeth started to laugh. When she stopped, she looked around the room.

"Creepy."

"What?"

"Somebody must have moved in here in the last twelve years, this stuff wasn't in _any_room of this place."

"Wow."

She started to stand up, but David stopped her.

_You just fell down and now you want to get up and walk around? Jesus, the girl's nuts._

"You should stay here. I'll look around the hospital for any signs of anybody being here recently, okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. I'll stay here and be a good girl. Just don't leave me here if you find anything you wanna check out. And if you find anything on my dad, even though I _know_where he is, tell me."

"Yes ma'am."

David stood up and left. He closed the door and started walking back toward the stairs to go back to the first floor.

"Ahh!"

David turned around at the noise. Could something have gotten Elizabeth? No. There weren't any monsters in here that he could see, and he spent twenty minutes looking through every room in the building to find one to put her in. But then he heard a shuffling noise, like somebody dragging one of their feet. Or both of their feet.

He checked the handgun again, making sure the bullets he found were in it, and aimed it back towards room S4. Out of the darkness of the hallway, he saw a woman walking towards him.

_Hope she's okay._

He lowered the gun and walked toward her. She was carrying something in her right hand.

_Another person in this city that's completely devoid of any kind of life other than monsters?_

Why did it seem hard to believe?

The woman reinforced that feeling. She started smacking at him with the pipe that she had in her right hand. David looked at her face―

―If you could call it a face. It was covered in bandages, which made David wonder how she could see him. Then he heard another one. Coming from behind him. The one in front of him was dressed like a nurse, and it-not she-wouldn't stop hitting him with that goddamn pipe. After a few swings, it knocked David to the ground. He kicked at its legs and then pointed the handgun at it. He fired at its head.

The first three bullets didn't do anything.

He fired at the neck.

It went down.

David stood up and aimed at the second one. But noticed that not only was there a second Nurse, but also a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and even a sixth.

"Oh, shit."

He took aim and fired at them.

ELIZABETH―AROUND MIDNIGHT

Elizabeth almost jumped out of the bed when she first heard the shots. _David?_Was he okay? She considered peeking out the door, but if he was shooting at a monster, she didn't want to distract him. And if he was shooting at another _person_, she didn't want to become the next victim.

After five or so minutes, the shots stopped. David shouted at her through the door.

"Elizabeth?"

"I'm here. You okay?"

"Yeah. Stay in there."

"Okay."

_Thank God. _He was safe.

_I don't think God is the one you should be thanking._ What the hell? Where did that come from?

_Hello? Echo? Luke, I am your father?_

_I'm not as stupid as your inner monologue, Elizabeth._

_Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my head?_

_I'm sure you remember me, don't you, Elizabeth?_

_Well, I don't know. Are you my dad? My mom? My little sister? My aunt Hilga? Who the hell _are_ you?_

_It's me, Elizabeth. It's Alessa._

_Alessa?_

Elizabeth remembered that name. When she and Billy had checked out Silent Hill when they were kids, Alessa was the name of a little girl they had met there. She was about the same age. She could remember when they met her, outside of the Lake Side Amusement Park.

ELIZABETH'S MEMORY

_I walked over to the little girl in front of me._

"_Who are you?"_

"_I'm Alessa."_

"_I'm Elizabeth, but you can call me Lizzy. This is my friend Billy."_

"_Hi."_

"_Where are you two from?"_

"_Well, I'm from Brahms, and Lizzy moved to Brahms from Portland a couple of years ago. Where are you from?"_

"_Here. I was born in the hospital on this side of town, Alchemillia."_

"_What are you doing here? And where's your parents?"_

"_I come here all the time. And I don't know where my parents are."_

"_That's sad, right, Billy?"_

"_Yeah."_

_She was kind of scared of us, I didn't understand why, and I still don't._

ELIZABETH―AROUND MIDNIGHT

_I was scared of making friends, Elizabeth._

_Why?_

_I tried making friends once, but my parents locked me in Brookhaven. In room S4. Twenty years ago._

_What? But, you were five when Billy and I met you._

_No, Elizabeth. I don't know how old I am, or even where I am right now. What you're hearing in your head is just your memory of me._

_Do you have anything to do with what's happening to Billy?_

_I'm sorry that it is happening to him. My influence was never meant to leave Silent Hill._

_Why? What do you want from people?_

_I want friends. And I want Stanley to come back to me._

_Stanley? The boy that lived in the house on Lindsey?_

_Stanley is not a boy anymore. He's a man. And I'm not the little five year old that you and Billy met twelve years ago._

_So what, you're a teenager like me?_

_No. I'm something more._

Elizabeth woke up from what seemed to be a dream. She sat up. The room looked different somehow. There was more red, well, more like the room was _covered_in red. Like somebody had bled all over the walls and it dried up quickly. Then there was the smell.

The place smelled like a dead body.

Elizabeth stood up an walked to the door. She grabbed the door handle, to which it didn't feel like.

It felt like a human heart. And it was beating.

Her hand suddenly jolted away from the door handle/heart. _What the hell?_She reached for it again, still feeling the beating heart. She tried to imagine that it was a normal door handle and turned it. She opened the door. She walked out of the room and into the hallway. The hallway had changed as well. Changed from a normal hallway to one that looked like it was made out of intestines or blood veins.

"Holy shit."

Brookhaven had changed into something else. It was still shaped like Brookhaven, but didn't look remotely anything like it.

"That's it. When I get out of here, I'm gonna join Billy in that nut house."

BILLY―BETWEEN TWLEVE-THIRTY AND ONE

Billy woke up from his sleep in Gucci's car. Gucci wasn't in the car, he was checking out an SUV at one of the entrances to Silent Hill. Billy got out of the car and walked over to the barricade.

_Billy…_

_Who?_

_Billy…_

_What the hell?_

_Billy…I need you._

"Billy."

Billy snapped out of his delirium. Gucci was standing next to him, gun drawn.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. C'mon. If we go in through here, we can make it to Brookhaven in a little under an hour."

"You sure that's where she'll be?"

"Yeah."

Gucci started into the town. Billy followed him. The town looked exactly like it did when he and Lizzy checked it out twelve years ago. How had people gone missing in this place? Lizzy knew how to get out of Silent Hill, why would she be missing? And if she came here for her dad, who hadn't been missing for as long as Gucci said, she would have found him by now and gotten him out of here, wouldn't she?

There were too many questions about this place. Too many weird things.

"So, why did your parents drop you off in Ashfield?" Gucci asked.

"Because of my dreams. I had strange dreams about monsters and demons. They thought I was crazy. Then I heard this strange voice in my head, telling me that I needed to go to Silent Hill."

"And you called your friend Elizabeth two days ago?"

"Yeah. She said she was gonna come over to help me, but my parents moved me to Ashfield before then. I didn't get to even say good-bye to her."

"You two were close?"

"If you could call it that. We had been friends since she moved to Brahms, but I didn't carry it any farther than that. Neither did she."

"But you care about her a lot."

"Yeah. She always helped with things. We didn't get to see each other as much during high school, but we still talked on the phone or when we did see each other."

"She sounds like a good person."

"She wa―_is_a good person. I hope we find her."

"So do I, Bill."

Billy walked up to the rest house that he and Gucci had come to. It looked okay, well, not _okay_, but it looked like it had twelve years ago. And a quick check in both the Men's Room and the Women's Room revealed that Lizzy wasn't in either of them.

"Billy!" Gucci called him from outside.

Billy walked out and found Gucci digging through a blue car that was parked next to it.

"What?"

"I think this car belonged to one of the missing persons, a James Sunderland. That name mean anything to you?"

"No."

"It's got a letter from his wife, dated October seventh, 2001. The car looks like it's been here for about that long but, the guy was reported missing last week."

"So, the car's been here for six years but the guy hasn't been?"

"That's what it looks like."

"Wow, call in CSI."

Gucci laughed at that. Billy looked at the tunnel to Old Silent Hill. It had been blocked off twelve years ago, but had a big hole through it now. Gucci looked over at it too.

"Think they went over down there?"

"No. Lizzy'd be at Brookhaven, if she's still in town."

_That_ Billy was sure of. Lizzy'd be at Brookhaven. If she's still in town. Lizzy, be in town. Billy started toward the stairs that would take them through the forest on the outskirts of the town.

_Who's in my head?_

Nothing.

_I know you're still there._

Still nothing.

Billy almost tripped on a twig.

"Goddammit!"

"What?"

"Stepped on a twig."

Gucci opened the gate that was ahead of them. The Graveyard. Billy knew that nobody of massive importance had been buried here since the early eighties, and that he and Lizzy had been inside the small church that was dominating one corner of the yard, right next to the manmade marsh.

Billy continued walking onward toward the other gate. Gucci followed him.

"Billy, you ever hear of a little girl named Alessa Gillespie?"

"I met a little girl named Alessa twelve years ago, with Lizzy."

"That's impossible, she died when she was seven."

"But, I know we met her. She said her named was Alessa, I remember that."

"Well, nobody else named their kid Alessa, so maybe it was the same girl."

Alessa was dead? That's impossible. But impossible things seemed more and more possible since the dreams that he'd had. Soon, they had gotten into the South Vale part of Silent Hill. Billy looked around. The town looked exactly as it had twelve years ago.

Except for the fog. That was new.

Billy took a step forward, the fog didn't allow him to see the flowershop that he knew was ahead of him.

"Billy, what the hell is wrong with this picture?"

"Fog. Lots and lots of fog."

"This place didn't look foggy from outside."

"No it didn't," Billy turned to Gucci, "Brookhaven is on the west side of town, we're on the east."

A noise. Billy turned his head slowly. It was coming closer. Gucci heard it too.

"What the hell is that?"

The creature came closer to them. It was only all of nine feet tall and had a muscular body. It didn't look like the insect creature from Billy's dreams, but it was just as scary. Its features were obscured by the fog, but Billy could see it all too clearly. It had a name, unlike all the other creatures he had seen in his nightmares. Its name was Lucifer. It had said it clearly.

"Gucci?"

"Yeah?"

"You got bullets in that gun?"

"Yeah."

"Shoot the fuckin' thing."


	2. Chapter 2

ALESSA―BETWEEN TWELVE-THIRTY AND ONE

Alessa Gillespie wandered around Brookhaven Hospital, bored out of her skull. Eventually she just sat down on the floor and watched the door to room M2.

"Boring as hell in this town…" she muttered to herself.

Alessa stood up and leaned against the wall. The floors were too cold for her to sit down on. She checked the bottom of her pants to see if they were covered in anything. They weren't, even though the floor looked like a big intestine. She started pacing the floor, and after a while it got way too boring.

_Ping!_

The noise came from the elevator just down the hall. Alessa pulled out the gun she had taken from the Old Silent Hill police station. She pointed it at the direction of the elevator. Elizabeth walked out.

"Whoa! Shit! Don't shoot!"

Alessa lowered the gun, somewhat scared.

"Sorry."

"Alessa, you scared the living shit outta me."

"How'd you know it was me?"

"I don't know. It just came to me. How am I able to see you if what I heard in my head was just my memory of you?"

"I don't know. But I am sorry for that."

Elizabeth walked over to her. Alessa stuck the gun back in her belt, felling the weight push against her skin.

"Why are you just standing there while the walls are covered in intestine?"

"Because I'm used to it."

"Used to it? How could anybody be _used_to this?"

"I was born in Silent Hill, I'm used to everything in this town, no matter how freaky it is."

Alessa opened the door to room M2, and walked inside. Elizabeth followed her. On a table was a piece of paper that had a medical journal on it.

**Dear Doctor Burke,**

**I found that a certain patient, Heather Coleman, has begun to have strange delusions. She has revelations about her ex-husband, Stanley Coleman, and has once or twice considered suicide. Today, she was cradling a doll, made for her by her ex-husband. I am afraid he has taken her mind and destroyed it, will you please help her? **

**Dr. Williamson.**

_Stanley?_

But, why would he do that to anybody? He _was_crazier than the three stooges, but would he hurt somebody like that?

"Alessa?"

Alessa looked over at Elizabeth, she looked concerned.

"Yeah?"

"What's it say?"

"Oh, it's about one of the patients here, Heather Coleman."

"Never heard of her. You?"

"Not her, but her husband. His name was Stanley."

"Did he used to live on Lindsey?"

"Yeah, until he was sent here. Then he was in the room right next to me upstairs."

"Were you in room S4?"

"Yeah, I told you that, didn't I?"

"No."

"Oh, sorry."

"Well, that explains all the little girl stuff."

"I can't let go of stuff, sorry."

Alessa put the paper back down and checked the drawer in the corner opposite the door. There was a pack of Double-Mint gum from 1989, and a radio.

"Who the hell leaves a radio in drawer with a pack of '89 gum?"

She turned it on, nothing but static came out of it. Alessa turned around to face Elizabeth, who was looking out at the hallway.

"What is it?"

Elizabeth didn't answer, she just backed up. Alessa pulled out her gun, waiting for whatever was out there to come into the room. The door started to close on its own, which never even happened in Silent Hill. Alessa pointed the gun at the door, putting the radio down on the table.

"Aleeeeeeeeeessa!"

Alessa looked up at the ceiling and saw what she thought could never happen―

―a disembodied head attached to a long dark cloak. The head was that of a little girl, and the cloak was long enough that it reached the door and went out further. Alessa was paralyzed with fear, she couldn't raise the gun to shoot at the thing, and Elizabeth wasn't moving either.

"Aleeeeeeeeeeesa!"

The thing started creeping closer, it was still calling her name. At some point, Alessa raised the gun. She pulled the trigger, each shot going through the strange phantom's long dark cloak. It continued to creep closer, its head turning in a 360 degree motion. Alessa started to back up into Elizabeth, who herself started to back up.

"ALESSA!"

The thing knocked them down, screaming out her name. Alessa shot it again, hitting it in the face and making it disappear. And with it, so did the intestinal look of the building.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…"

Elizabeth stood up, she walked over to the door.

"Alessa, what the hell was that?"

Alessa couldn't talk. She kept looking up at the ceiling where that Phantom was. She slowly stood up herself.

"Fuck, fuck…"

"Alessa! Snap out of it!"

Elizabeth put her hands on Alessa's shoulders, scaring her greatly.

"Sorry. Fuck, I'm sorry."

"What was that thing?"

"I don't know, but it scared the shit outta me."

Alessa wasn't sure if she was human anymore, but she still had human emotions, human feelings. And she knew that Samael fed on those.

Mostly anger.

And anger stemmed from fear.

Which she had in spades.

DAVID―NEAR ONE

David heard the screams from in the locker rooms on the second floor of Brookhaven. He had just found a couple more boxes of shotgun ammo, but that didn't help because the shotgun was still with Elizabeth. He stuffed them in his pocket anyhow, and picked up the piece of paper that was underneath them.

**Patients admitted to hospital within the last two days**

**Coleman, Heather; 24; female **

**Ricard, Nolan; 56; male**

**Bishop, Charles; 65; male**

**Wilkinsen, Kristina; 10; female**

**Franke, Samantha; 19; female**

**Note that Samantha Franke and Heather Coleman must be admitted to the psychiatric ward, due to severe hysteria and usual shouting of random phrases. Charles Bishop was sent to the morgue, following stab wounds to the chest and hypothermia. Nolan Ricard tested positive for HIV and his victim, Kristina Wilkinsen, also tested positive. Both are to be kept away from one another in the onset of another arousal attack on the part of Nolan Ricard. No female nurses are to attend to him.**

"Wow, if only that mattered worth a damn."

He placed the paper back down in the locker, belonging to Heather Coleman, one of those that was admitted to the psychiatric ward. He closed it and opened the next one, finding a discarded brassiere, a uniform, and a picture of a young boy, presumably her son. The third locker had another piece of paper in it. He picked it up and read it.

**Hey, Kristie, y'know that guy that was just put in the psychiatric ward? What's his name, Robert or Bob, I think it was. He's got this adorable seventeen year old, her name's Elizabeth, I think he said. He was telling me all about her. He's also got another daughter, she's seven I think, but he didn't say much about her. He says he's divorced now, the wife got the seven year old and the seventeen year old stays with him of her own free will. I can't remember what he's here for, I think Dr. Burke said it was for raping a woman while he was drunk. Sounds like something for the county jail, not our personal nut house. Well, that's all, more later, girl!**

**Billi Jo**

_Name's Bob, seventeen year old daughter named Elizabeth, and she mentioned a kid sister, is that a coincidence?_

It didn't seem likely. The paper itself had some wear, maybe a couple weeks old, which would match up when Bill called him. But he went missing and ended up being treated in a ghost town? And Elizabeth seemed adamant that her father was still at home, and that her parents were still together.

_Unless…_

Elizabeth's friend Billy had been put in a mental institute for almost total disregard for reality, what if Elizabeth's frequent trips to escape her parents arguing, had really been Elizabeth escaping from reality herself? Was Elizabeth insane? Had she learned to control what she saw? Was that what Silent Hill did to people? Helped them see what they wanted to see?

_Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp_

Footsteps. Light footsteps. Like a girl's.

"Elizabeth? Is that you?"

David opened the door, seeing her turn the corner and lift the shotgun.

"Oh, God, David, it's you."

Behind her was another girl, who looked almost exactly the same as Elizabeth, wearing a sweater with a "Don't Touch" symbol over the chest and a pair of blue jeans.

"Elizabeth, I think I found some info about your father," he handed her the paper and she read it.

"But, my parents aren't separated. This can't be him."

"Elizabeth, I'm not so sure about that."

"What?"

"I think that Silent Hill is helping you get over their divorce. You said that you made regular visits when they were fighting, I think you made those visits when you had to deal with the fact that they were separated. Then, Silent Hill would make you remember them when they were together, and you would think that again."

"So, I _am_nuts? Is that it? Do you think that Billy had his nightmares because he couldn't come back to Silent Hill? Alessa, is this true?" she had turned to the other girl, now known as Alessa. Alessa took a long time to answer.

"I don't know. Usually, anybody that comes to Silent Hill doesn't leave. You guys did because you were children, and I didn't think that this town would get to you guys."

David was curious about this Alessa girl. What did she mean by that?

"What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"My name's Alessa. Alessa Gillespie. I was born, raised, and killed at least twice here in Silent Hill. Somehow, the town and I are connected, and anybody that I make any kind of connection with doesn't leave. I―I don't really know who I am myself, every time I try to remember something, I can't."

David stared at her for a minute or two. Is she the manifestation of the town? This teenage girl?

"Are you safe to be around?"

"David," Elizabeth whined.

"I want to know. Are you safe to be around?"

"If you thought I wasn't, would I still be alive?"

That logic hit David pretty hard. This girl was something else. Literally.

"If you ever think you won't be safe anymore, don't continue to follow us, okay?"

"Right."

David pulled his hand away from the gun, at some point it had drifted close to it. Elizabeth handed him the shotgun, probably scared that she was going to blow her own brains out after finding out what may be the truth about her family.

David opened the door to the storeroom, feeling a strange rush of heat spill out from the room. He winced from all the heat, he could barely hear the scraping of the Great Knife.

Pyramid Head was in there.

"David!"

David didn't say anything, didn't do anything.

Pyramid Head was in there.

It had paralyzed him.

"DAVID!"

David did his best to do something. He managed to drop the shotgun, Elizabeth picked it up and tried to move him.

But he couldn't move or be moved.

Pyramid Head was in there.

David felt Elizabeth's slender hands pry him away, he knew that if he didn't move in mere seconds, he would probably be on the receiving end of that big ass knife. At some point, Alessa had started to help Elizabeth, but it didn't matter. David's brain told his muscles in his legs to move the hell away, told the muscles in his arms to move his hands back to the door handle to close the door.

But his brain couldn't make his body do shit.

Pyramid Head was in there, moving closer to him.

All of a sudden, Elizabeth had moved in front of him. She was firing off the shotgun. But it was no use, the shells seemed to go into the bullet-proof helmet of his. David tried his best to move. Alessa was still pulling on him, and Elizabeth was now pushing on him. He couldn't see anymore. Couldn't see anything but red hot heat. Elizabeth was still calling his name, but he couldn't hear her.

He could see something now.

Pyramid Head's long black shadow in a pool of blood.

ELIZABETH―ONE O'CLOCK

Elizabeth held David in her arms. He was unconscious. The big insect dog thing that chased her before had come back, she was sure she'd either knocked it unconscious or killed it, but something had paralyzed David just before he fell down.

"He all right?"

"Yeah, just out cold."

Elizabeth remembered the piece of paper that David had given her, about that patient named Bob. If it was her dad, if her parents were divorced, and if Silent Hill had become her own personal heroine addiction, then something weirder than big ass monsters running around was going on in this town.

"Where can we put him?"

"The only clean place to put him is room S4, but I don't know if it's safe," Alessa kneeled down to put her hand on his forehead.

"Then let's put him there."

Ten minutes later, they set him down on the bed in room S4.

"Liz? What do we do now?"

Elizabeth didn't answer. She just sat there, watching David, thinking about what he said.

"Elizabeth!" Alessa had, at some point, put her hands on Elizabeth's shoulders and shaken her out of her daydream like state.

"Sorry."

"I can understand if you think you're going crazy, but right now―"

"It's not that, Alessa. What if I always _was_crazy? What if I _did_use Silent Hill to get away from my parents breaking up? What if I used Silent Hill to delay myself what was happening to Billy?"

"Whether you did or not, it doesn't matter now, does it? We still need to do something to help David, and we need to get out of here."

"What about my dad? If he's in Silent Hill, I want to help him too."

"So what? We just look around a goddamned ghost town to find him? That could take _months_, Elizabeth. And if your dad's been here for two weeks, we don't even know if he's alive."

"You're right. You're right. But what do we do? Do we search around this place for something to bring him back," she indicated David, "or do we secure an exit route?"

Just then, the sounds of gunshots from the second floor had started to echo up to the third. Someone else was in Brookhaven. Elizabeth grabbed the handgun David found before they met, and Alessa grabbed her own, and they ran over to the elevator. Someone had called it down.

"Okay, so we just keep the guns ready and wait for whoever it is to come up," Alessa had already pointed her gun at the elevator. Elizabeth did the same.

The elevator took what seemed like hours to come up from the second floor. And when it opened, someone Elizabeth never expected came out of it―

―William 'Billy' Harrison.

"Whoa! Did we miss something here?" asked the guy in the trench coat that was standing next to Billy. He had raised his own gun.

"Liz? What the hell are you doing? Put the gun down!"

She did so. So did Alessa. So did the guy in the trench coat.

"Billy? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Looking for you. Gucci said that you and your dad went missing, and I knew that you'd be here."

Gucci must be the guy in the trench coat, as Billy was pointing at him with his thumb.

"Tom Gucci, Toluca county police."

"Little Tommy that lived over by the elementary school?"

"Who are you, young ma'am?"

"Alessa. Alessa Gillespie."

"Impossible, if you are, you died years ago."

"I know."

"Alessa the little girl from the amusement park?"

"Yup."

"Wait a minute," Gucci said, putting away his gun, so did Elizabeth and Alessa, "this is getting crazy. Alessa, you died almost thirty years ago. And Elizabeth, you're mom said she hadn't seen you in almost a year."

Gucci's words reinforced what that paper said.

Her parents were divorced.

"Yeah, my parents are divorced."

"You didn't mention anything like that to me," Billy said, showing compassion.

"I didn't know until today."

Elizabeth started to walk over to room S4.

"If your parents have been divorced for a year," started Gucci, "why did you just learn about it today? How did you _just _about it today?"

Elizabeth started the story, "Well, twelve years ago, Billy and me came here, to Silent Hill. We checked it out, and then we met Alessa. She talked about how she was born in Alchemillia. When we started to check the place out, it seemed kind of familiar to me, but I didn't say anything. Then we met an adult. He was crazy, he hopped down a mine shaft and killed himself in the fire that was still burning down there.

"Then, a couple of time since then, I came back to Silent Hill to escape what I thought was my parents fighting. Today, I learned that my parents weren't fighting, I came to Silent Hill to escape the fact that my parents were divorced. I guess I didn't want to deal with it, and Silent Hill made me think that they weren't divorced."

Billy looked at me with a shocked look, "But, my doctor in Ashfield talked to your mom this afternoon, why would she be at your house if your parents were divorced?"

"She was looking for you, Elizabeth," Gucci answered Billy's question.

_All this time, I've been escaping reality. If I hadn't come to Silent Hill all those times, would I have ended up like Billy? Would I have been sent to that psychiatric hospital? What would have happened to me?_

"Liz?" Alessa put her hand on Elizabeth's shoulder.

"I'm fine. Now, we need to help David."

"David Oliver?"

"You know him?" she asked Gucci.

"We met last night when he got to the town. He went missing not long after that. Guess he ended up here with you?"

"Yeah. He's out cold right now, I don't know why but he just fell down."

Gucci walked over to room S4, and the door blasted from it's sockets, knocking him against the wall. Billy was standing next to her, Alessa on the other side. Then it came out of the room.

It was tall, seven foot easy, and it had a weird helmet on, kinda looked like a pyramid. It was also carrying a big knife-looking thing, bigger than a sword. It dragged the knife-sword behind it, walking away from the room and toward Alessa.

_Why her?_

Billy was moving now, walking backwards. So did Elizabeth, so did Alessa. Gucci was out. The big guy kept lurching toward them, then it grabbed the handle of the knife-sword with both hands and swung it, the momentum making Elizabeth fall down and take Alessa and Billy with her.

"AAAALEEEESSAAAAA" the thing said through that huge helmet.

It reached down with its free hand, but it also didn't kneel, so it was blind-grasping. It grabbed hold of Elizabeth's shirt, pulling her up.

"Please, please, don't do anything, please…"

"AAAALEEEESSAAAAA"

_It's talking to _me_, not her._

"I'm not Alessa, I'm not…"

"AAAALEEEESSAAAAA"

It started to turn around, still carrying her in its hand.

_Lemmego, lemmego!_

"Lizzy!" Billy called after her. All of a sudden, everything went white.

BILLY―ONE O'CLOCK

Billy watched as the big thing from his dream took Elizabeth away.

"Lizzy!"

The thing didn't turn around.

_Doesn't he know he doesn't have Alessa?! Doesn't he know __anything__!?_

"What is that thing?" he asked Alessa, "Where the hell is it taking her?!"

"I don't know! Okay? I don't know! I've never seen it before!"

"How?! The goddamn thing is SEVEN FEET TALL! How the fuck could you NOT SEE IT?!"

Billy grabbed Alessa by the shoulder, grabbing hard.

"Billy, let me go, please, you're hurting me."

Billy saw it, the same thing Lizzy always had in her eyes when she was being hurt. Billy let go, not realizing he had hurt her so much.

_What the hell is wrong with me? Why did I do that?_

Billy walked over the Gucci, helping him up. Alessa walked inside the room and checked the guy laying on the bed, no doubt the David guy that they were talking about earlier.

"He's okay, surprising considering that thing walked out of the room he was in. How's Tom?"

"He's―he's okay, just out cold."

Alessa walked over to him and grabbed his arm, gently.

"Billy, I understand how you feel, but unless you get your head on straight, we can't help Lizzy."

He saw it again, the look in her eyes. The same as when Lizzy showed compassion.

"Who are you? Really? Are you Alessa Gillespie, or are you Lizzy?"

"What makes you say that? I'm Alessa."

"But every time I look at you, I see things that Lizzy does. The same feelings in your eyes, the same looks that she does."

"Billy, I think you need to get some rest."

"No, no, Lizzy needs help. Gucci and that guy will be fine if we leave them here, c'mon."

Billy set Gucci down slowly, and then pulled the gun out of his holster.

"Billy, give me the gun."

Alessa was holding her hand out.

"Why?"

"You almost broke my arms in two just a little bit ago. With your head the way it is, do you think I trust you with a gun?"

She had a point. Billy handed her the gun, feeling stupid. Alessa started towards the door that led into the main area of the third floor. Billy followed her. Even how she walked, he couldn't shake the feeling that she and Lizzy were connected.

_Why am I thinking this? She's Alessa, not Elizabeth. They aren't the same person. What the hell is wrong with me?_

Did he really belong in that psychiatric hospital? He was starting to think now that he did.

Alessa opened the door to the storeroom, there was a corpse inside.

_Don't be Lizzy Don't be Lizzy_

She went over and checked it.

"It's a male nurse."

_Thank God!_ It wasn't Lizzy! Billy walked around the corner, he picked up a crutch that was leaning against the wall.

"Billy," Alessa had seen him pick it up, "that you can take, just so long as you don't hit me with it."

"Right."

He walked over to the first door that he saw. He opened it and peered inside. It looked to be an office of some kind. He walked over to the computer that was sitting on the desk and read the e-mail that was on the screen.

**Dear Doctor Williamsen;**

**This is a notice from Doctor Muldoon about a patient in my care, William Harrison. He has given strange remarks about Silent Hill recently, even so far as to saying that the town caused his delusions. This afternoon, he was taken away from the hospital by a police officer named Gucci, they were headed for Silent Hill. His friend, Elizabeth, also has suffered strange delusions at her home. According to her mother, who is taking care of her in her ex-husband's absence, Elizabeth has taken to running off to Silent Hill to escape her parents divorce. She has told me that Elizabeth made several incisions on her arm. Apparently, whatever is causing their psychosis has taken larger effects on her than it has on William. She went missing just this afternoon, presumably to Silent Hill. If you should find her, place her in your care. William's files shall also be transferred to you so that he can also be placed in your care. Thank you. Herman.**

Billy couldn't believe what he had read.

_Lizzy's crazy too? Crazier than me?_

Billy had assumed something when he found out that Lizzy had just today learned that her parents were divorced, but she didn't act crazy, not like he had just ten minutes ago when he hurt Alessa. Billy hit the print button and waited for a minute or two. Then, he walked out into the hallway to show Alessa.

"Alessa, I found something that you should take a look at," she had stopped in the middle of the hallway, she looked like she had seen a ghost, which was possible in their current circumstances, "What's wrong?"

"I found something too, on the second floor."

They walked down the stairs to the second floor. She opened the door to the store room. On the floor lay a corpse.

"I checked his ID. It's Lizzy's dad."

Billy walked over to it. The face was _gone_, thanks to what looked like a shotgun blast.

"Elizabeth shot him earlier, but I didn't know it was human. I thought it looked like a big bug thing."

"What about Lizzy? What did she see?"

"I don't know, but I guess she didn't see her father if she blew it's brains out."

"Good point. I hope she's okay though."

ELIZABETH―ONE O'FIVE

Elizabeth opened her eyes. She looked all around the room, seeing just a big dark emptiness.

"Elizabeth…"

"Who's there?"

"It's me…"

"Who?"

"It's Alessa… The Alessa you met twelve years ago…"

"But, OW! My head hurts!"

"Don't worry… You will feel good once more…"

"OW!"

_If this is the Alessa I met twelve years ago, who is the Alessa I re-met today? And why does my head _HURT SO MUCH?!

The answer wasn't in front of her. Nothing was. She fell down and held her head, the throbbing pain getting worse with each second.

ELIZABETH―ONE YEAR AGO

Elizabeth curled up into a ball at the fence.

_Why would Mom and Dad talk like that? Why?_

She watched the cars go by as she sat there in a fetal position, thinking about what her parents had said to one another. Dad was yelling at Mom for backing up Stephanie when she said Dad was cheating on Mom. Dad didn't cheat on Mom, but Dad was known to go out to strip clubs every Saturday night, but Mom didn't really mind, or else she would have left him years ago.

_Am I the reason?_

No, that was stupid. Why would Mom divorce Dad over her?

Another car went by, scaring her a little. She'd tell Billy about this tomorrow.

_Tell him about what?_

That thought came out of nowhere.

_Mom and Dad are still together. They'd never get divorced._

Of course. Why had she been so stupid as to think that her parents would get divorced?

Elizabeth started to feel sleepy, she closed her eyes. The only sounds now were cars driving by. They sounded like a lullaby.

DAVID―ONE TEN

David woke up in room S4, feeling light headed.

"Jesus…"

He looked over at the door.

It was gone.

Gucci was propped up against the wall opposite the bed.

David stood up. He walked over to Gucci and checked his pulse. It was normal. He then walked out into the hallway. Alessa and an young boy were walking towards him.

"What the hell happened here?"

"Did all that _not_wake you up?" the boy asked.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Billy Harrison. I'm Lizzy's friend."

The boy that was admitted to the psychiatric retreat in Ashfield. Gucci must have brought him here to find Elizabeth.

"Is Gucci awake?" Alessa asked.

"No. Where's Elizabeth?"

"Some weird thing took her away."

"Christ…"

"David, do you not care? If it hadn't been for her you would have been killed down on the second floor."

"Pyramid Head. Did Elizabeth kill it?"

"Pyramid Head? Wait, is it like seven feet tall, big helmet, and a really big knife or something?"

"Why are you asking me? Didn't you see it? The damn thing paralyzed me!"

"So, you saw Pyramid Head, me and Lizzy saw that big bug thing, but neither of 'em was real…"

"Whaddya mean 'neither of 'em was real'?"

"That was Lizzy's dad," Billy said, looking like he had betrayed her.

_Her father? She killed her own father? Did she really see the bug creature? My God, what is wrong with her?_

"Jesus Christ."

"We don't know where she is, but I found stuff that proves humans are or were here today," Billy stated.

"What kind of proof?"

"My doctor over in Ashfield, Doctor Muldoon, he sent an e-mail to one of the doctors here telling them about my release and warning them about Lizzy's violent tendencies."

"What violent tendencies? The girl's as harmless as a goddamn mole."

"Lizzy has been cutting herself on the arm."

With that, Alessa turned around and did something. Then she turned back around and held up her arm, several parallel scars adorned her right arm.

"Like this?"

Billy was shocked, as was David.

"What the hell? Were you doing the same thing?"

"I don't know. I―I just found these not too long ago. I rolled my sleeve down over them to hide them. I guess I didn't want anybody thinking I was nuts or something."

"That must have been what Lizzy was doing, she covered them up so that we couldn't see them."

"But, why would I have cuts on my arms, too? And what about Lizzy? If she's been doing this to herself, would she do it again where ever she is now?"

David walked back inside room S4 and grabbed the shotgun again. He remembered the ammo he had in his jeans pocket that he picked up in the locker room.

"Okay, we need to search this building from top to bottom. Billy, check the roof. Alessa, you stick with the first floor. I'll go to the basement."

"We already checked this and the second floor, she wasn't on either," Billy said.

"Good, stick to the plan. If neither of you find her, meet up again up here."

"Wait a minute, Mr. Oliver," said Gucci, waking up from his coma, "do you know how to initiate a systematic search for a seventeen year old girl?"

"Not really."

"You and I will take the basement together. You two do as he told you. And give me my gun back."

Alessa handed Gucci his handgun.

"Now we start this thing."

They started off. Billy went to the roof, as he had been told. Alessa walked with them until they reached the door to the first floor. And last and least, Gucci and David entered the basement. In front of them was a wall, then a turn. There was a door to the right with the words "Electrical Room" printed in large white lettering. The door was locked. Continuing down the hall was a second and third door as well as another turn. The second door opened into a small storage room.

"This place has a lot of store rooms."

"It's a hospital, Dave."

The third door wasn't locked, it was jammed.

"Will shooting the lock work?"

"Not on a jam. We're gonna have to break it down."

"Count of three?"

"One."

"Two."

"THREE!" the both of them said together as they ran at the door, knocking it inward. Elizabeth was sitting on the floor in front of them.

"Elizabeth…" David said, panting, he walked over to her and helped her up.

"Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God" she said, obviously frightened beyond all measure.

"C'mon, Dave, let's get her out of here."

"Weird voices in my head GET EM OUT!" she screamed. David had to move his head away from her mouth.

_What the hell is happening to her?_

Gucci led the way out. They walked all the way back up to the third floor. For the second time in recent memory, he was carrying Elizabeth up to room S4. Billy and Alessa were waiting by the entrance to room S4, they obviously could tell that Elizabeth wasn't okay. David set her down on the bed, and she lapsed into a coma once more.

"Is she all right?" asked Billy.

"I don't think so," answered Gucci.

"Can I talk to her?" asked Alessa, "I've obviously got some connection to her, let me talk to her. Maybe I can help her."

"I don't think that's a good idea―" David was cut off in mid speech.

"Look, David, I've been in Silent Hill for as long as I know. I know things about what goes on in this town that none of you would ever want to even consider thinking about, so please, let me talk to her?"

There was a long silence before Gucci answered, "Alright. We'll wait down the hall, you talk to her."

David, Gucci, and Billy all walked down the hallway toward the elevator as Alessa walked inside room S4. _Please get something out of her other than babble._

ALESSA―ONE NINETEEN

Alessa sat down on a chair next to Elizabeth.

"Lizzy, can you hear me? If you can, can you give me a sign? I don't know, maybe a kick in the knee for being stupid and thinking maybe you're as crazy as that doctor guy from Ashfield says you are."

She didn't say anything.

"Lizzy, please, if you're still in there, say something, do something―fuck, do ANYTHING! Please tell me you're still in there!"

"Who are you?"

Finally! She said something! _Not quite what I was expecting, but it's something._

"What do you mean?"

"There's a little voice in my head telling me that you're not really Alessa."

"Well, that voice needs to look me in the eye and say that to my face so that I can kick its ass."

She didn't do anything after that.

"I'm just trying to cheer you up, Lizzy. Are you okay?"

"I'm crazy. Do you think I'm okay?"

"I guess not. Sorry."

"That's okay. I'm sorry for acting like you were somebody else. Of course you're Alessa. Where is everybody?"

"Gucci made them all go down the hall while we talked. Can you sit up?"

"Not without my head hurting. I can't even think straight it hurts so bad."

"Can you describe your pain? I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a therapist or anything."

"No, it's okay, it's relaxing, like when my mom took me―"

"What? What did your mom do?"

"My mom took me to a therapist once. To help me get over my dad leaving me alone. It was only last week. The guy was my mom's new boyfriend. He was staying at the house with my mom and Stephanie so that they could help me when my dad left."

"How come you didn't say anything before?"

"I forgot. Just like I forgot that my parents split up. I forgot about everything I did to myself. I even forgot that my dad left. Something that tore me up inside and I forgot it completely. Why would I do that?"

"Did you come to Silent Hill after that?"

"Yeah, I did. I slept over by the cemetery that night. I remember it because a cop found me the next day and took me home to my mom and da― no, my dad was gone, it was my mom's boyfriend."

"Lizzy, I think you've become dependant on coming to Silent Hill."

"There's no thinking involved. That's obvious. Tell me, did I get that big bug/dog thing earlier?"

"Lizzy… I don't know if I should tell you this or not, but I'm going to anyway. That bug/dog thing, it wasn't a monster."

"What do you mean?"

"That was your dad."

"What? That couldn't have been my dad! OW!" Elizabeth sat up to say that but then laid back down.

"Stay down, stay down. I know that that probably hurts you, but it's true. That was your dad that you shot with the shotgun in the store room. You killed him."

"Why would I do that? Why would I kill my dad?"

"You didn't know it was him, it's understandable―"

"Or did I? I can remember a lot of stuff now, but I can't remember why my dad left that night. Maybe he did something that I didn't like, maybe I did know it was him and I killed him because of what he did. Why is this town doing this to me? Why am I forgetting everything?"

"Lizzy, can I send Billy in here for you?"

"No, I want some time to get some sleep, maybe that'll stop my head from hurting."

"Okay."

Alessa stood up, taking one last look at Elizabeth.

_All she's been through. What _is_ happening to her?_

She walked out of the room. Billy started to walk toward her.

"Is she okay?"

"She's sleeping, hopefully. She doesn't want anybody in there. She told me a lot."

"What did she say?" asked David.

"She told me that she remembers her parents splitting up, her mom dating a therapist, and her dad leaving. She doesn't remember why her dad left though, but she's pretty sure that might be the reason she shot him if she recognized him."

"This is enough," stated Gucci, raising his gun, "we've got to get out of this town, soon. Alessa, do you know any ways to get out of here?"

"Ways? Yeah, tens of thousands of ways. The problem is actually getting out with the town like this."

"What do you mean 'with the town like this'?"

"That fog that covers the town, you remember that, right? That's keeping us in an alternate dimension."

"Okay, wait, alternate dimension? This place is weird but that just goes below par," said Billy, piping up from behind David and Gucci.

"Yeah, but it's the truth. Why do you think I haven't actually left Silent Hill in almost thirty years?"

"So we're trapped, we have an unconscious girl on our hands, and we're running short of bullets for everything but the shotgun. The basic awareness of the situation is that we are good and screwed," stated Gucci, clearly making them aware of what was already well established fact.

"I do know a way to get us out of the foggy version of the town."

"How?" asked Gucci.

"There's an old amusement park on the other side of Toluca lake. It's called―"

"Lakeside. And to get there, we've gotta go through the Lake View Hotel," added Elizabeth as she walked out of room S4.

"Should you be standing up?" asked Billy as he walked over to her.

"I'm okay, Billy. Really, I am."

_Everything she's been through and she's giving us orders?_

That sounds like the Elizabeth that Alessa remembered from twelve years ago.

"So, we gonna go?" asked David, he already started walking towards the door to the main portion of the third floor.

"Dave, wait a minute―" the door to the main portion of the third floor was kicked open, and a man walked in.

_Stanley._ It had to be. _But why's he here?_

STANLEY―ONE TWENTY-SEVEN

Stanley Coleman had finally found out a way to get to her. He kicked the door to the psychiatric wing open, and walked in.

_I must get to Alessa, she is the only one who has ever cared._

There were people standing around room S4, and one closer to the door he had just broken down. They were standing in his way. He took out the gun he had found in the basement and pointed it at the close man.

"Back away! I want her and you can't take her away from me!"

"Hold on, buddy! Who in the hell are you talkin' about?"

"Alessa! I want her now!"

"Sorry, can't take her."

"Die fool!"

Stanley pulled the trigger, putting one of the bullets into the man's right shoulder, the gun jumping in his hands. The man had a gun of his own, a shotgun. He fired it, missing Stanley completely. A man in a trench coat near room S4 raised his own gun and fired, hitting Stanley in the knee.

_The pain! THE PAIN!_

He fell on the wounded knee, the pain of the bullet inside his flesh, past his kneecap, his sense of touch like a razor being taken to his brain. He tried to stand up, but the razors on his brain made him fall back down again.

_What is happening?! What is this PAIN!? _

Never in his life had Stanley felt the pain he was feeling now. Stanley tried to lift the gun, but it weighed too much for him to hold with two hands. He dropped, feeling the weight suddenly leave his fingers. He tried to crawl away, and got as far as the stock room. He opened the door and went inside, then closed the door.

_Why can't I get to her? Why won't they let me reach her?_

Suddenly, he could hear them talking.

"What the fuck did that guy want with me?"

"I don't know, but I hope he bleeds to death."

"C'mon, we've got to get to that amusement park."

"We've got to go to the Silent Hill Historical Society."

He knew where he had to go now. The Lakeside Amusement Park. Alessa was waiting there for him.

_Come to me, Stanley. They want to take me for themselves._

"I'll come, Alessa…"

_Please, hurry. I'm stuck on the roller coaster._

"I'll get you down from there, I promise…"

Stanley stood up, and walked over to the boxes of storage supplies. He pulled out one of the nurses portable first aid kits and started to bandage up his knee. He then left the room, limping around. First, he picked his gun back up. Then he started to follow them. He knew a faster way to Lakeside, the boat dock his father had built in secret across from the Texxon station not three blocks away from Brookhaven.

Brookhaven, where Alessa had told him that she loved him.

Brookhaven, where he experienced pain for the first time.

Brookhaven, where he learned what he needed to do to help Alessa.

He started down the stairs, the limping made it hard. As he hit the bottom step between the second and first floor, he missed it and started to roll down the stairs. To a passing observer, this would be incredibly funny. But there were no passing observers in Silent Hill, not while the fog covered everything. He stood back up right in front of the door to the first floor. He opened it and walked out, walking towards the door to exit the building. He walked outside, it was nighttime. The fog was lighter during the nighttime. He continued along his path toward the boat dock that his father had built. The boat was still there. He got in it and un-roped the wooden rowboat into the lake. He would get there first.

ELIZABETH―TWO O'CLOCK

Though her head felt like shit, Elizabeth kept going on. She'd told Billy that she was okay so he wouldn't make them wait longer.

_I hope that what Alessa said was right._

The Historical Society's front door was an amazing thing to watch. Every second or two, it started to move back and forth in a wavy pattern, but that was probably just sleep deprivation combined with whatever Silent Hill had done to her brain for the past twelve years. Gucci said that they needed to check out the building, so she opted to stay back because she didn't have a gun. She didn't have a gun because when she was offered one, she handed it to Billy because of her fucked up brain.

_I really hope they get back soon, I've gotta pee like nobody's business._

"Lizzy, it's okay," Alessa said to her, walking in from the other room. Alessa's blonde hair was turning slightly reddish, but that was probably because of her fucked up brain again.

"Okay."

"You okay?"

"Yeah, fine, never better. Can we just get moving?"

Alessa could probably tell it was a lie. On the way to the building, Alessa showed Elizabeth her own arms, also cut up just like hers. She would have asked about it, but knew that Alessa didn't know the truth. There was some connection between her and Alessa.

_Like when Pyramid Head took me when it said it wanted Alessa? If we're connected, what is it?_

Alessa led her to where the David, Gucci, and Billy were waiting. The room was what looked like a normal room, except a really big hole that had a really long set of stairs going down. When she looked down the stairs, they started to wave back and forth, making her dizzy. She almost fell over into Billy, who held her upright.

"Sorry. 'Fraid of heights."

"Lizzy? Can you keep going?"

"You think I wanna stay in this shithole of a town? No offense, Alessa."

"None taken."

"Lizzy, if you can't keep going, I'll carry you."

"That would be nice."

Where did that come from? Why did she say that? She'd never really wanted to think of Billy that way before, why did she now? Was her fucked up brain doing this to her?

_Damn it, I can't even think straight._

Billy hoisted her up. She must have been pretty heavy, because Alessa had to help him keep his balance. They started down the stairs. They seemed to last forever, especially to Elizabeth.

_Why is this happening to me?_

When they hit the bottom, Billy set her back on her feet.

"Thanks."

"No problem. But you are kinda heavy."

Elizabeth smiled at what he said. Gucci opened the door that was in front of them. He scoped out the hallway beyond the door.

_Fup, fup, fup, fup_

There were footsteps in the hallway. Gucci walked foreword, and then he started shooting, the bullets sounded really loud for some reason, probably her fucked up brain again.

_My ears hurt, my ears hurt_.

She grabbed her ears and kneeled down. Billy kneeled down next to her and Gucci stopped shooting.

"Lizzy? Are you okay?"

"You guys go ahead, I'll stay here with her," Alessa said, also kneeling down.

"Is that a good idea?" asked David.

"We'll catch up, go."

"Alessa, take good care of her," ordered Billy.

"I will. Go."

Billy, Gucci and David left, Billy lingering on for a few seconds. Then he left. Alessa sat there, watching Elizabeth.

"Look, Lizzy, are you okay? Never mind, stupid question. What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I―I all of a sudden couldn't hear anything but those gunshots, and they scared me. And when you led me to the stairs, it wasn't because I was afraid of heights that I said I felt dizzy, it was because I was feeling weird. What's happening to me, Alessa? Why is it happening?"

"I don't know, but we're gonna get you out of this. Okay? We're gonna get you home to your mom."

"Alessa, what exactly do you know about me?"

"Everything you've told me. Why?"

"Because you seem to know as much about me as I do, and when Pyramid Head clearly said it wanted you, it grabbed me."

"I know, that didn't make much sense, but this is Silent Hill, _nothing_makes sense."

"And you've got scars on you that I made on my arm. What is the connection to us?"

"You mean besides the fact that we're both teenage girls and we've both got the same feelings for the same guy, and we look kinda similar and―oh God, we're the same damn person aren't we?"

"That's what I've been getting at. And whenever I have any problems, you're the only one I can talk to without saying that I'm just fine. And I still remember being in Brookhaven before I met you twelve years ago."

"But, why would you have gone there before then?"

"I don't know."

"C'mon, Lizzy. If we are the same person, I'll help you through this until we get out of here, okay?"

"Okay. Alessa, can you help me up?"

"Yeah," Alessa said, grabbing Elizabeth's arm and helping her up.

Alessa led her into the hallway. The monster that Gucci shot earlier was lying on the ground, dead. It was like one of those things she and David encountered on their way to Brookhaven.

_So long ago. Like years. But it's really only been three hours._

Alessa took a look around the first room they came to and found a piece of paper.

"Holy shit."

"What?"

"_My _mom is involved in this."

"What?"

"Here, read this, my mom's name is Dahlia," she handed her the paper.

**Alessa's reawakening has occurred. Once the young girl that Alessa has taken the form of in human society returns, we must obtain her. I have sent the servant out to find her, she has taken up partial residence in Brookhaven for the time being. If the servant does not get her, it is your turn, this is important to me. My daughter must birth God. She must bring about the destruction of the stupidity of what mankind has become.**

**Dahlia**

"She's talking about me, isn't she?" Elizabeth asked.

"I think so."

"So, who's the real one? You or me?"

"We both are. We're both standing here. If anybody's fake, it's me. You're the one with a real life outside of Silent Hill."

"But Silent Hill's making me crazy, literally."

There were footsteps coming from behind them. Light footsteps, like somebody walking barefoot down those long stairs. Alessa turned around, so did Elizabeth. Elizabeth could see a strange look on Alessa's face.

_On _my_ face. Or is it hers? I'm confused now._

Down the stairs came an old woman, with long dark hair, and she was wearing a long dark gown to go with it.

"I see you've returned. And both of you are here, just as I'd hoped."

"Who are you?" asked Elizabeth.

"That's my mom. That's Dahlia Gillespie," stated Alessa.

"How are you doing, my daughter?"

"Fine, till you got here. What do you want with us?"

"To bring about God's resurrection once more."

"Didn't dying last time let you know that that's the stupidest idea that you've ever had?"

"Oh, my daughter, you weren't complaining last time."

"I was seven last time."

"And now, you've brought your manifestation back to Silent Hill."

"Elizabeth is a person, like you or me. And she just wants to leave. So do I."

"Neither of you can leave, you are both required."

"Sorry to say this, _mom_, but fuck you!"

Alessa pulled out the gun she had in her belt and pointed it at Dahlia. She shot it off, the bullet hitting Dahlia in the shoulder. The gun sounded loud again, louder than last time, something was worse this time. At the same time, Elizabeth felt a strange pain in her stomach, as if something was in there.

"Lizzy!" Alessa screamed. Elizabeth could barely hear her because of the pounding in her ears after the gunshot.

Suddenly, the ringing in her ears after the gunshot are nothing compared to the headache and strange feeling of full body pain.

_Like the opposite of an orgasm…_

Alessa helped her up and pulled her along. Alessa kicked open a door and pushed Elizabeth inside, then closed the door after she got inside. She knew it all happened―she just couldn't hear it.

"Lizzy, are you okay?"

Elizabeth couldn't answer. She couldn't even hear the question. The headache, the throbbing pain in her ears, everything in her was making it so that she couldn't even think straight.

_Pain bad bad pain pain hurt pain not good hurt bad hurt_

"LIZZY!" for a second, that stoped the pain, "It's okay, get back to where we are. We're in the Silent Hill Historical Society building, my mom is lying back there bleeding because I put a bullet in her shoulder, and we just found out that you and I are the same person. We've got to go find Billy and David and Gucci, so get it back together!"

"Yeah. Back together…"

Elizabeth stood up, shaking her head in some futile attempt to shake off the pain. Alessa opened the door, sweeping the hallway with her gun.

"She's gone. What the hell?"

Elizabeth followed her as she walked in the direction they had started going in the first place. At the end of the hallway that seemed longer than it really was, there was a door. Alessa opened it. Inside was a hole that was the size of the room it was in. As Elizabeth looked down, the hole seemed really, really long. She shook it off again.

"Okay, Lizzy, are you okay with jumping?"

"Sure. What's the worst that can happen? I fall on my head and wind up with amnesia? Right now, that wouldn't be a bad idea."

Alessa smiled at the joke, which only made Elizabeth feel like she had made the situation worse. Alessa stepped foreword and jumped into the blackness. Elizabeth knew she was next, so she also jumped. The creeping blackness rose up to meet her.

GUCCI―TWO FIFTEEN

Gucci swept his weapon from side to side as they entered the cafeteria. David was holding his head, he landed on it.

"Dave, how many bullets you got left?"

"I dunno, twelve in the box and six in the gun."

That wasn't a whole lot. _I'm running low too._Gucci lowered the weapon, turning to face David.

"We're in a bad spot here. Billy, how much you got left?"

"Eight in the gun and maybe―ten in the box."

Gucci knew that Billy wasn't in all together a good mood.

_Can you blame him? His girlfriend and her look-alike-that-died-years-ago are both far behind us, and if those shots I heard were aimed at anything other than the guy that threatened us back at the hospital, I don't think they made it out alive._

Not a good thing to tell the kid, but it was the truth.

Gucci turned back around and opened the door, which led out into a hallway that was blocked off by a large gate. No going that way. There was a door cattycornered from the cafeteria. Gucci walked over and check it. It was unlocked.

"There's a door here."

David and Billy also walked over. Gucci opened the door, there was a cell block. A dozen or so cells lined one wall, none of them looked open. Gucci took a few steps toward one, it opened easily. The bed was stained red, as were the walls, the table, the toilet. On the bed was a piece of paper. Gucci took a close look at it.

**This morning, The Order took some more of the guys on B block. That crazy bitch came back too, she took a look at me and said to one of the guards that she wanted me. I don't know what the hell she meant, but it scares the shit outta me.**

**Yesterday, a couple more off of B block. That part of the building must be empty or something, they took out sixteen guys in three days. Today, Nevil walked up to my cell and asked me if I wanted to eat. I told him no, cause I know what happens to guys when they eat. They don't come back.**

**The crazy bitch came back again. She asked me if I wanted some food this time. I told her to fuck off and leave me alone.**

The writing this time changed from the calm handwriting to a hurried writing.

**The crazy bitch is takin people outta here herself. She's gonna be here any second. I landed in this goddamned place because I wanted to help out my wife, now I'm gonna die for it. If anybody finds this, it'll be my will. Somebody, tell Nyssa that I'm sorry.**

That was it. _Crazy bitch…could he mean Dahlia?_Dahlia Gillespie, Alessa's mother. She was in with The Order, and she was crazy.

_And last I knew, she died years ago when the fire broke out, but so did Alessa, and she's carrying around Elizabeth._

The fact that Dahlia could still be alive was disheartening at best, frightening as all _hell_at worst.

David had, at some point, walked over. Probably when he was reading the journal of the dead man.

"What'd ya find?"

"Looks like a journal or diary of some kind, one of the prisoners. He mentioned a 'crazy bitch' coming to get him."

"His wife?"

Gucci smiled―forced a smile really, he was still thinking about the possibility of Dahlia being alive.

"Billy's checking the rest of the cells."

"Okay. Let's go help. We're the adults here."

Billy was about halfway down the hallway when he pointed his gun at one of the cells. He fired two, three, four times. Gucci and David broke into a run, meeting up with the boy who had lowered his weapon.

"What the hell was that?"

"That."

Gucci looked in the cell, seeing what looked to be a young woman. In fact, if Gucci didn't know that Elizabeth and Alessa were quite some ways behind them, he would have thought it was either of them. The young woman was about their height, same hair length, similar clothing to Elizabeth. The only thing that was different was the face.

It didn't have one. What appeared in the area instead was what appeared to be a large, deformed vagina.

"Sweet Jesus. What the hell is that thing?"

Billy started to walk back toward the cafeteria. Gucci couldn't keep his eyes off of the woman-thing that Billy had killed. David was the first to notice.

"Billy, where are you going?"

"To find Lizzy and Alessa."

"We had to jump through a hole to get here, they're probably still walking around that sewer that we came through."

Gucci turned to look at the boy.

"He's right, Bill, they'll be here soon though, we'll wait in the cafeteria."

Then the door that they had come through opened, and in stepped―

―Dahlia Gillespie. The leader of The Order.

_Well fuck me._

"Sinners! You shall pay for what you've done to my precious daughter!"

She had a bullet hole in her left shoulder, probably Alessa or Elizabeth's work. She carried what looked to be a Colt revolver in her right hand, and she pointed it at Billy.

"Now just hold on a minute, Dahlia, what do you mean what we did to your daughter?"

David looked at him with confusion.

"You know this bitch?"

"She's a cult fanatic, she's also Alessa's mother."

Dahlia didn't lower the revolver.

"My daughter is on her way here, along with her manifestation, soon, they will both be in my possession and I will bring about God again. Nothing can stop Her rebirth!"

_Manifestation? God?_Then it dawned on him. _Elizabeth_.

Elizabeth was Alessa. Or at least part of her. And God, that was what Dahlia was trying to do years ago, when she burned down the town.


	3. Chapter 3

BILLY―TWO TWENTY-ONE

Billy looked at the woman that Gucci had called Dahlia.

_She's talking about Alessa and Lizzy. But if she means what she does, then Lizzy is part of Alessa._

It didn't really take that much of a stretch to believe, Lizzy and Alessa looked a lot alike, and both seemed to be able to talk to one another. That was something that Lizzy couldn't do, talk to other girls. She was most comfortable talking to him, or other guys.

"I will bring about God, She will see Her rebirth. My daughter will allow me to do this. Why do you not want this to happen? God will bring us paradise."

"The last time you talked about this shit, you burned Silent Hill to the ground. And Alessa hates you," Gucci said from in the back.

"Alessa is my daughter, she will do what she must do."

Billy held up his gun, Dahlia's was still pointed at him. Billy pulled the trigger, hitting her in the stomach. Dahlia also fired her weapon, hitting Billy in the knee. Gucci and David also fired their guns, each hitting Dahlia, gunning her down. Gucci ran over to Billy, helping him up. Billy aimed his gun at Dahlia's head, and pulled the trigger.

"Bitch…"

Dahlia was dead. Hopefully.

"Billy, you okay?" David asked him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just can't stand up."

The door opened again, and Lizzy and Alessa walked into the room.

"I guess that makes you and me closer than ever," said Lizzy as she slumped against the wall.

"Lizzy…"

Billy limped his way over to her. She helped him up against the wall with her. Alessa walked over to her mother. She checked out the corpse.

"Is she dead?" Billy asked.

"Yeah."

"Good goddamn, motherfucking, riddance."

Lizzy reached her head over to Billy and kissed him on the forehead. Billy was shocked.

_Does this count as scoring?_

"What the hell did you do that for?"

"You needed it."

Billy slid down the wall, falling asleep. Lizzy did right after.

ALESSA―TWO TWENTY-SIX

Alessa laid her mother down on the bed in the first cell.

_Mom, why were you such a bitch?_

Billy and Lizzy were still asleep, and David and Gucci were checking out the rest of the prison. Alessa was just there to watch the two love-bird sleepers.

_Lucky girl. I make her up outta my mind and she gets the guy._

Just harmless girl-stuff.

They looked pretty peaceful, just sitting there. She had to admit, it was tempting not to make them think they unconsciously started hugging.

"Alessa!" shouted Gucci as he walked down the cellblock.

"Yeah?"

"We think we found a way outta here."

"Really? That quick?"

"There's a door to the basement that leads to a dock just outside. We'll can take that across Toluca lake and get to the Lakeview Hotel."

"Okay. Should we wake them up?"

"How was Elizabeth doing?"

"Before she fell asleep, she was complaining about headaches and lots of pain."

"Jesus, okay, do you think that she'll be okay?"

"I don't know. I guess it was a lot to digest, that she and I are one in the same. I thought it was."

"Has any of this happened before?"

"Yeah, once. But I thought that was the end of it."

"Bill'll be okay. He's just got a bullet wound. He'll live through it. Elizabeth though, we may have to carry her with us."

"Okay. I'll do the carrying. You're the cop with the better accuracy, and David can help out Billy. And me and Lizzy seem to be pretty close."

"You're the same damn person."

"True."

Alessa walked over to Lizzy and pushed some hair away from her face.

"Lizzy?" she whispered. Lizzy gently moved, almost waking up, "Lizzy?"

Lizzy opened her eyes, they were pretty bloodshot.

_God, I wonder how she feels? And I just woke her up, too. Sorry._

"Alessa? What is it?"

"Gucci says we've gotta go now. How's your head?"

"Better. And I don't see three of anything anymore. Did I actually kiss Billy on the forehead?"

"Yeah. He liked it."

"I bet he did. I don't care what happens when we get outta here, I'm going to a nut house for some peace and quiet. Maybe my head'll feel better then."

"Very funny, Lizzy."

Alessa helped her up. Gucci helped Billy up. Lizzy was soft, warm, but her breathing was erratic. And Billy was still asleep.

"Lizzy, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just a little out of breath. I guess I didn't get enough sleep…"

They walked toward the door. Gucci opened it, setting Billy down as he swept the room hallway for the third time with his gun. He put it away and picked Billy back up. He was still asleep. Then the sounds from behind them woke him up.

Alessa spun around, careful not to hurt Lizzy.

There was Pyramid Head, standing there, walking toward them with that big ass knife of his.

Billy scrambled off of Gucci's shoulders. Lizzy almost did the same thing. Alessa held onto her so that she didn't.

"Stop, okay?"

"Get that thing the hell away from me…" her voiced sounded small.

_Lizzy, please don't try to let go of me, please…_

Alessa wanted to reach for her gun, but she also had to keep hold of Lizzy.

"Alessa," Gucci said, scaring her because of the authoritativeness of his voice, "take Elizabeth and Bill and go find David."

"What about you?"

"Go, now."

He was pointing the gun at Pyramid Head. Alessa grabbed Billy's arm and started to lead him away. Then the sound of gunshots were lost to Lizzy's wincing pain. Billy tried to pull away, but Alessa pulled harder. Then she opened to door to the other cell block with her partially free hand and led them inside, closing the door after them.

_Gucci, Tom, please be okay, please be okay. Please don't die, and please be okay._

The hoping that she was doing probably wouldn't be enough.

GUCCI―TWO THIRTY-FOUR

Gucci put another bullet into the thing that knocked him out just three hours ago. It wasn't going down. David had called it 'Pyramid Head', a name which seemed apt considering the large pyramid shaped helmet that it had on its head. The large knife that it had in its hand was also something of an oddity. On one hand, the helmet looked as painful to wear as it did to look at, and the knife had to weigh at least a hundred pounds. On the other hand, the way it was walking, it didn't look like it cared.

_And it's coming for either Alessa or Elizabeth regardless, don't let it. You're a cop, you've got the experience with the weapon, you've got to stop this thing before it kills anybody._

Gucci started to back away slightly, still concentrating his fire on the center mass of its chest. The thing didn't slow down. It obviously had other wounds, unless the blood covering its butcher apron was from its victims. Gucci kept firing until the chamber went dry, and the magazine dropped from the handgrip. He slid another in and the gun was loaded. More bullets, this time in the stomach. It still didn't back away. Another magazine down, another in the receiver.

The battle was one-sided. Pyramid Head wouldn't let itself be stopped.

_So slow it down. The knees._

He aimed for the right knee cap and squeezed the trigger. The right knee bled quickly, and Pyramid Head still did not slow down.

"You're a persistent fucker, ain't ya?"

Pyramid Head did not answer. It only continued its forward march. Gucci continued to put bullets into its knee. On the fifth bullet in the left knee, it stopped for a few seconds, dropping its knife and cradling its knee with its hands.

_What the hell?_

Gucci fired his weapon more, hitting the right knee for the tenth time, and then it exploded, sending blood and cartilage everywhere. Pyramid Head fell to the floor, still cradling the left knee. Gucci took the time to back out of the cell block and close the door, locking it with the outside bolt.

"That better hold you, you bastard."

He broke into a run, not even bothering to holster his weapon just in case the big shit managed to get out of there. The cafeteria side of Block A was separated from the rest of the building by a large metal gate, so Pyramid Head wouldn't be able to follow them that way.

As soon as he got to Block B, he slammed the door closed. Alessa, Elizabeth, and Bill were nowhere.

_Good girl, I hope you got 'em to Dave._

On the subject of Dave, he opened the opposite door and waved for Gucci to come on. Gucci ran toward him, shoving the sidearm back into its holster and sprinting for his life. Then he heard a noise from behind him. _Fuck, no…_He slid to a stop and looked back, seeing a fully functional Pyramid Head following him.

"Shit!" David screamed. Gucci turned back around and ran for the door like he had never run before, braking fast as he hit the door, slamming it closed and bolting it faster. He grabbed David's arm and pulled him along as they ran for the trap door to the basement. The ran down the stairs and then into the door opposite them, almost tripping as they ran the corner of the dock.

"You guys okay?" Alessa asked as she helped him onto the boat that was sitting at the dock.

"We're fine," said Gucci as he cut the rope off of the boat and hit the engine. They started across Toluca lake. It had mysteries of its own.

DAVID―TWO FORTY

David almost fell asleep, the trip across the lake had so far taken twenty minutes.

_Either this is one big ass lake, or we're running on shit-for-gas._

Not that it was a big boat, and it was carrying five people, but it could stand to go faster.

"David?" it was Alessa that had woken him up from his almost-nap.

"Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"Fine. How's Liz and Billy?"

"They're asleep for the second time in an hour, but they're okay."

"Good. What about you, Tom?"

"When did this become a first name thing? I've been getting used to everybody callin' me 'Gucci'. I'm fine, by the way."

"Good."

"You can take a nap too," Alessa's voice was both playful and calming.

_And what do you expect? She's more than half your age and she's one of the only two women that haven't ran away from you yet._

Then again, the other one was Liz.

"That's okay. How far along are we?"

"'Bout a mile. You sure you don't want that nap she offered?"

"A mile? This lake is over a mile wide?"

"It's about five, actually. Maybe six."

"Shit. Maybe I will."

He laid as far across as he could with the small size of the boat and nodded off to sleep. Then the nightmare came.

DAVID'S DREAM

_The street was dark. There was no sign of anything. Just fog. _

_Where am I? He wondered. There was nothing he could see to determine his location. _

_He walked forward a little, noticing a small piece of wood on the ground. He picked it up and looked up again. There was a noise from behind him. _

_What the hell is that? he thought. _

_He looked behind him, seeing a large dark shadow. _

_Oh, shit… _

_He started to back up, seeing the shadow grow larger and more fierce. The shadow began to take shape, molding itself into the form of what he now knows as Pyramid Head. He ran, not looking back again as he heard Pyramid Head follow him. Not even in his own nightmares could he get away from that thing._

_It caught up to him, picked him up and slammed him to the ground, into a hole. Dirt began to pile up all around him as he saw Pyramid Head standing far above him, laughing. Laughing as loud as he was powerful. Then he heard a voice, from far away―_

―_David David wake up now okay David wake―_

DAVID―TWO FORTY-FOUR

"―up."

David pulled himself up and shook off the nightmare once more. He was breathing heavily, feeling his sweat trickle down from his forehead. Alessa was sitting by his side, patting him down with the sleeve of her sweater.

_Pyramid Head. I've known about that shit for longer than I've been in Silent Hill._

"David? Are you okay?"

"No. I just had a fucking nightmare."

"Yeah, sorry, wrong question."

"No, no, I can understand what you meant by it."

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"No. I don't want to have that damn nightmare again."

"Good, 'cause we're almost there," said Gucci, making his words sound like a call to arms.

David looked over to his left, seeing the growing shape of what could only be the Lakeview Hotel.

"That place is huge."

"It's three stories, about a couple square blocks. And we have to go through it to get to the amusement park," Gucci said as the boat pulled into dock.

"What about the two love birds?"

"I'll carry Lizzy again."

t then, Liz woke up, as if on command.

"You don't have to. I can walk."

"Okay, I'll carry Billy then."

Billy didn't wake up. David wondered what was going through the boy's mind.

_His kiss not twenty minutes ago? What ever is real or not about his girlfriend? Whether or not he's insane? _

David himself stood up, almost rocking the boat. He jumped into the water, feeling it rise up to meet him. David had never been a particularly good swimmer, but he knew how to stay upright in the water, and could stay floating. He started forward, toward the large shape of the hotel, and grabbed onto the dock. Gucci was just finishing tying the rope to a pole. David pulled himself up onto the dock, his wet clothes sticking to him like a skin.

"What'd you do that for?" asked Gucci.

"I needed it. I've been sweatin' like a damn hog for almost a day now."

"I am _so_glad you did that," said Alessa as she clamped her nose shut with her hand.

"Very funny."

They started walking toward the hotel, Alessa supporting Billy as he was still asleep. Elizabeth was walking okay, not as erratic as she had been earlier. David starting to wish that he hadn't taken the swim that he had, he was now colder than Hell in a heat wave. Gucci was leading them. The front door opened to a very small hallway, which itself led to a check in desk, two other halls to either side.

"Dave, you take that one," pointing to their right, "Elizabeth, you go that way," he pointed to the right, "we'll meet back here in ten minutes. Alessa, you and I'll go in this room to check it out."

They started to spread out. David pulled the wet handgun out of his wet pants and pointed it forward. The barrel was mostly dry, but he wasn't sure about the bullets.

_Didn't Cybil tell you not to let a gun get wet?_

He couldn't remember. There was a corner that led to an elevator. He pressed the button a couple of times, nothing.

_The door behind you._

He walked back toward it, saw that Elizabeth was disappearing down a short hallway.

The door opened to a small restaurant. There were about a dozen tables, four chairs to each, and each chair was set upside-down on the table. There was a small piano in the corner to the right of him, and a door that led to a deck right across from him.

_Jesus…_

There was the corpse of a child lying against the sliding glass door right across from him. A young blonde girl. From the looks, she couldn't be seven years old.

"I never knew her name."

David spun around, Alessa was standing in the door way.

"I used to talk to her about her parents. It was nice to hear what she said. I never had parents that actually cared for me, but you could see that through my mom."

"You didn't do this, did you?"

"Not that I can remember. If I did do it, I was probably out cold. I hate killing people. The only person I ever had any satisfaction in seeing die was my mom."

"Okay, how's Billy?"

"Gucci's with him. He's still asleep."

"He better wake up soon, or maybe he should stay asleep, this place seems like it's a damn nightmare anyway."

Alessa looked tired herself, like she hadn't slept in days. She had also yawned a few times that David could see.

"This place is empty," he said as he started back to the door.

"Yeah, and the employee door is locked too."

"Let's go."

ELIZABETH―TWO FIFTY-ONE

Elizabeth looked across the room. Her head still hurt a little, but not enough to actually hinder her in any way. All the rooms on the west side of the hotel were practically the same. From the door, there was a bed, a closet, a TV, a VCR right underneath or beside the TV, and a window, almost in that order. The only thing that actually changed was the position and size of the window. There was a feeling of familiarity when she got to room 111, it almost looked like her parents bedroom.

_If they were my real parents._

She threw the thought away. Even if she was fake, the only parents she had known were the ones she lived with her whole life, so they were her parents.

she walked over to the bed, she found a small photograph lying on the bedside table. The photo was a picture of her parents, and a little girl. On the back were the words

**Bob and Carla and Lizzy- July 1993**

_Me? That's me?_

Now she knew why Silent Hill seemed as familiar as it did. She had been here long before she and Billy decided to take a look through it twelve years ago. She sat down on the bed, it felt comfortable, then she realized she was still wearing the clothes she got from the house over on Lindsey street, what felt like years ago when it was only hours.

_Yeah, but a life time of shit has happened to me since then._

The bed was a little _too_comfortable, she was almost falling asleep. Elizabeth stood up and left the room, walking back toward the grand foyer that everybody was waiting in most likely. Gucci had given her the biggest portion of the hotel to search. As she closed the door, she heard a loud noise come from the direction of the front door.

_My curiosity's gonna kill me…_

She walked toward it, and saw that damn bug thing that was chasing her just before she met David. It didn't see her, not yet, so she backed up.

_Is it real? The last time I saw this thing, it was my dad, and I killed him…_

She didn't want to find out, she backed into the door to the foyer and opened it, keeping an eye on the creature. As she got inside, she closed the door and collapsed against it.

"Guys, if you've got enough bullets, there's some bug thing out there," she said, her eyes closed. Nobody answered.

"Guys? Alessa? Billy? David? Gucci?" again, nobody answered.

She stood up and walked over around the giant stairs that took up the middle of the room. Nobody else was there.

"Guys, please tell me that this is just one big joke and that you're all really hiding near here."

She walked around the room, nobody was nowhere.

"They left you, didn't they?" asked a voice from behind Elizabeth. It almost made her jump.

Behind her was a girl, probably about four years old.

"My friends left me alone too."

"What's your name?" Elizabeth asked her.

"My name's Liz."

_Liz?_

"Do you have a last name?"

"No. I'm an orphan. But I might get adopted soon."

This couldn't be Elizabeth when she was younger, she didn't have any friends until she met Billy. But then again, she had assumed that her parents were her genetic parents, and that she was a real person, so she could have been wrong about that too.

"Where'd your friends go?"

"They're still at the orphanage."

"Did you see some people here just a few minutes ago?"

"They said something about finding a car and going to the amusement park."

Why would they leave her there? Were they afraid that she wouldn't be able to leave Silent Hill?

"Did you see which way they went?"

The girl pointed at the sliding glass door that was right to Elizabeth's left and the girl's right.

"If you go look for them, can I come?" the girl―Liz―asked.

"It's too dangerous. I don't know if you can see them, but there's monsters out there, including one big one with a weird head."

"I can see the monsters. They leave me alone."

"I still don't want you to come with me, okay? It's for your own safety."

"You wouldn't let a little girl follow you around? You walked around Silent Hill with your boyfriend years ago when you were five."

How did this little girl know this?

"Just who are you?"

"I'm you, Lizzy. I'm everything you don't want to remember that you are. You don't want to remember your life before you were adopted."

The little girl started to grow, aging to about a 45 year old woman, then she started to raise up, her feet not even touching the ground. Strange barbed-wire started to come from her toes, her fingers, almost everywhere a person can imagine.

"Oh shit…"

"What you did to anyone who tried to know you, what you did when your parents separated, what you did when you learned that Billy was in a nut house, what you think about Kristen when she's not around―you don't want _anyone_to know this stuff, but I know it _all_."

Elizabeth didn't have a gun or even a stick or something to protect her from this thing that was saying it was what she wanted to forget. Then a hail of bullets from a shotgun hit the creature in the head, knocking it down against the wall and the sliding glass doors. Elizabeth looked up the stairs and saw Billy, holding the shotgun, pointing it downward at the creature.

"Lizzy, you okay?"

"Now I am. Thanks."

Billy was walking down the stairs toward her. Elizabeth hugged him just as soon as he got there. She could tell that he was shocked by what she was doing.

"Thanks to you too."

"Can we go home now?"

"David and Gucci are checking out the rest of the hotel now. We'll be leaving pretty soon."

"Good…"

ELIZABETH―THREE WEEKS AGO

Elizabeth laid on her bed, her hands behind her head, looking up at the ceiling.

_Why does Mom want me to see this guy anyway?_

Her mother wanted her to see a therapist, her new boyfriend. Her father had left just a couple of days ago, and her mom was worried about her.

"Elizabeth? You okay?" her mom asked from outside her room.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Mom. When do you want me to see your boyfriend?"

"Tomorrow, he'll be down tomorrow."

"Okay."

Elizabeth could hear her mom walking away. She stood up and walked over to her desk and sat down.

_Am I crazy? Why does Mom want me to see a therapist?_

There was no answer at the moment.

The piece of paper on her desk was staring at her, waiting to have something on it. Elizabeth was a good artist, and an okay writer. In her off-time, she liked to draw comics that she would show Billy whenever he came over. He had always told her that she should go professional, but she didn't want to.

After a couple of minutes, there was a drawing on the paper of a zombie from some video game she used to play. It had on a green coat, it was bald, and had crusty blood all over its mouth.

"Maybe Billy's right, I am pretty good at this."

Then she started to feel tired, she put her head down on her desk and fell asleep. She'd tell her dad about everything tomorrow…

BILLY―THREE O'FIVE

Billy held onto Elizabeth for a little bit longer after he shot the weird woman-thing.

"You two look like your havin' fun," it was Gucci, walking down the stairs. David and Alessa were behind him, "ready to go?"

"Yeah, I am," said Lizzy.

"Me too."

"Then let's get the flock outta here."

Gucci walked over to the sliding glass door, stepping over the woman-thing, and opened it. The fog had come back in full force, it was apparently daytime again.

_What do you expect, you've been out cold since after you shot Dahlia._

Billy almost had to shield his eyes as the fog hit him.

The moved forward in a line. Gucci was in front, David behind him, then came Billy and Lizzy, and Alessa brought up the rear. For a group of people that have nothing in common (with the exception of Lizzy and Alessa being one in the same), they surprisingly knew what to do when they got outside. Lizzy still held on to Billy, mainly by holding his shoulder. Billy didn't know if she was using him to prop herself up, or if it was because of their holding one another earlier. Billy looked back at Alessa, who tried to hide a smile.

_Who's she trying to kid?_ Billy didn't know.

As they walked along Sandford street, the amusement park came into view, and it was bigger than Billy remembered it being. The front gate itself was about thirty feet tall and thirty wide, it was arched at the top. That led to a large greeting area where, usually, a few people in crazy costumes would be greeting kids and adults and other passers-by. Just past that was another gate.

"I take it that this is the amusement park?" asked David.

"Yeah, there should be a way out of this fog realm somewhere," answered Alessa.

"Still, we need to be careful, nobody shoot at anything unless it's in the way," ordered Gucci as he opened the gate.

Just as the gate opened, a shot hit the ground in front of Billy, sending him back a step. Then that crazy guy from the hospital came into view.

"None of you will stop me!"

"Just calm down, sir," Gucci said, waving his hands in a 'put the fucking gun down' gesture.

"I told you that you wouldn't stop me, and I fucking mean it!"

Billy pulled out his own gun and aimed it at the crazy guy. Alessa walked in front of him and waved her own hand to make Billy lower the gun.

"What the hell are you doing?

"I know this guy, don't shoot him."

Billy looked over at David, who was both staring at the guy and rubbing his right shoulder. Billy almost forgot that the guy shot David there earlier.

"Stanley," Alessa said, walking toward the crazy guy, "it's me, Alessa."

"Impossible. I know where Alessa is, she's on the roller coaster, so I don't know who you are, bitch!"

Billy could tell that Alessa was incredibly irritated at that.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm right here."

All of a sudden, a little girl walked out from behind the crazy guy. _It can't be…_It was Alessa when Billy and Lizzy met her twelve years ago.

"She's just a fake, Stanley, shoot her so that we can be together!"

Alessa took a step back, Billy got his gun ready again, so did Gucci and David.

_C'mon, let's blow this fucker to Hell!_

"Alessa is right here, see? You're gonna die, bitch, but not after I have some fun with you!"

The man moved with amazing speed for somebody with a make-shift bandage tied around his knee. He grabbed Alessa by the arm and dragged her, then shot at the group with the revolver in his left hand. Billy pushed Lizzy out of the way watched as David and Gucci fired at Stanley.

_Kill the bastard…_

The first bullet from Stanley hit Gucci in the knee, sending him downward but still able to fire. Then he hit David in the chest, knocking him back onto Billy's legs. Stanley had, this whole time, not been hit. And he was still dragging teenager Alessa, meanwhile little-kid Alessa was following him as he disappeared behind the gate opposite the main gate.

"_Fuck!_" David spat as he stood up, covering the wound on his chest with his handgun, blood pouring out any chance it had.

"Stop right there, Dave," ordered Gucci as he tried to stand up, "this is a hostage situation and one that ain't lookin' good. We need to wait a few minutes and make sure they don't spot us while we follow them."

"They've got the _only fucking way_that we can get out of this shit-hole and you're saying we wait for them to get the fuck out of Dodge before we even _try_to get her back?!"

"Dave, I've been through hostage situations before, I know what he's thinking right now. He's probably thinking along the lines of 'as soon as they come through the door, I'll blow their heads off and get away clean.'"

"I don't know about that," piped up Lizzy from behind Billy.

"What do you mean?" asked Gucci.

"Alessa knows that guy. And I think I'm wearing his clothes."

"What?" asked Billy.

"I don't know what Alessa knows about him, but when me and David were at his house we found a letter from his parents to the docs at Brookhaven," she fished a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket, "after we got to Brookhaven, it kind of added to itself."

Billy took the paper from Lizzy and read it.

**Karen Coleman**

**Stanley isn't well. The other day, he murdered his brother Stephen. He kept screaming at us that Stephen told him to do it, but I couldn't believe him. Stephen had so much to look forward to. He had a model rocket project, and even a trip to New York next Tuesday. Of course, if I hadn't told him about it, he would never have gone there. Please, help Stanley, Doctor Truman. Brookhaven is the best medical facility in all of Silent Hill. Please Doctor Truman, help our son.**

Gucci grabbed the paper from Billy's hands after he finished reading.

"Great goddamn. That's it, we're gonna follow him and make damn certain he doesn't kill Alessa. Elizabeth, you and Bill know your way around this place?"

"I don't remember much," answered Billy.

"I do. I can even draw you a map of the place from memory."

Lizzy took the paper and pulled a pencil out from her pocket. She started to draw a map of the amusement park. She even topped it off with a cartoon Pyramid Head pointing to the front gate.

"Cute, huh?"

"Cute…" David was struggling to breath now, the hole in his chest was probably killing him.

"Dave, can you go on?"

"Yeah. I'm fine," he said, just before falling backwards. Lizzy helped him over to the side of the gate.

"You guys take the map and go get Alessa, I'll stay here with him."

"Alright. Bill, you up for this?"

"Hell yes I am."

Billy started toward the gate, Gucci following him.

_Alessa, don't let that son of a bitch do anything to you, okay?_

Billy opened the gate, which led to a large circular area with lots of shops. Gucci closed the gate behind them. They started toward the most probable area that Stanley would go.

STANLEY―THREE O'SEVEN

The fake, teenage looking Alessa was wriggling in his arms as Stanley dragged her with him. The real, beautiful, young Alessa was leading them to where the fake bitch would meet her end.

_And we'll watch it. Her and I. The love of my life will watch as the disgusting creature that used her name in vain dies. And she'll watch it with me._

"Stanley, let the fuck go!"

"No, bitch."

They reached the roller coaster just as the car passed them.

"Do it, Stanley. Throw her onto the tracks where she can't escape, just like she did to me."

Stanley let go of the bitch and kicked her onto the tracks.

"You little _bitch!_" the fake screamed, "I've never even _met _you! Let alone tossed you on a goddamn roller coaster! I'm just bitchy, not cruel!"

The fake looked around for a little bit, then climbed back onto the platform and punched Stanley in the face.

_How could she do this to me?_

He stood back up, ready to take the gun and blow her stupid, fake brains out. He did pull out the gun and he did put it to her head, but pain in his lower back stopped him from pulling the trigger.

_What's happening?_

Stanley fell onto the tracks. The roller coaster car was just coming into sight.

"Ale―ss―a―" was the last thing he said.

ALESSA―THREE ELEVEN

Alessa looked away as the blood from Stanley splashed all over her clothes.

_Good fuckin' riddance._

Stanley was either crazy enough or stupid enough to not realize that she could easily climb off the tracks and onto the platform before the car got back to the platform for the next ride.

The other Alessa was standing there, staring at Stanley's corpse. She was in awe at the sheer gore of the scene in front of her.

"Alessa," called Gucci as he approached her.

"I'm fine. A little shook up, but fine. Where's Lizzy and David?"

"Back at the front gate. Where's this exit that you were talking about?"

"It doesn't exist," the little girl Alessa was apparently done looking at Stanley, "I made sure of that, so that Stanley and I could live here for the rest of our lives."

Gucci walked over to the girl.

"Bring it back."

"No. I won't."

Alessa looked over at Billy, who's face was a burning red, either from exhaustion, fever, or anger. Possibly all three.

"You _bitch!_" Billy spat at the little girl, making her jump, "You trapped us here so that you could live here with a fucking _psychopath?!_"

Billy walked over to the girl and was about to grab her by the neck when Alessa got in the way.

"What the hell―?!"

"No. I don't care if she did trap us here or if she's not even real or if she's a little bitch, she's still just a little kid," that must have shocked Billy, that Alessa was willing to get in between him and the girl because of her maternal instincts, "we'll just find another way out. There's a whole part of Silent Hill we still haven't even checked yet."

"Okay," Billy started to calm down a little. _Good boy…_

Gucci grabbed the little girl's hand and pushed her into the control room for the roller coaster.

"What do we do now?" asked Gucci.

"We go back and get Lizzy and David," answered Billy as he started toward where he and Gucci had come from.

"We follow Billy," Alessa responded. Gucci nodded.

Lizzy and David were still at the front gate when they got back. David didn't look too good.

"He's out. I managed to stop the bleeding though," said Lizzy as they walked up.

"Damn. It seems that every time we want to move forward, one of us is either injured, unconscious, or captured. Bill, you carry Dave. Alessa, you and Elizabeth stay in the back and everybody follow me."

They started forward again. Once they got back to the roller coaster, Alessa noticed that the little girl was gone.

_Where could she have gone?_

That was a disturbing thought. Not only that, but the roller coaster car and Stanley's body were also gone.

"Shit," Gucci said, looking down each side of the roller coaster track, "Where'd that little girl go?" he turned to Alessa as he asked.

"I don't know. I saw her in there before we left."

"Shit. We're not going along those tracks until we see where the car is."

After a few minutes, the coaster car came back.

With Stanley's corpse sitting in the seat, looking at them and smiling.

Alessa looked away, and saw Lizzy do the same in the opposite direction.

"Oh God…" she and Lizzy both said.

"That's sicker than shit," Billy almost yelled.

"No kidding."

Gucci pulled the body out of the car and dragged it into the control room.

"Everybody, get on," Gucci ordered as he got into the car himself.

_Christ. That little girl's a fucking psychopath._

Psychopath. That was a word Billy had used to talk about Stanley earlier, and one that she had been hearing and reading her whole life. She had even used it to describe herself once or twice.

_And maybe Lizzy's used it for herself today…_

The reality that they were one in the same, two separate parts of Alessa Gillespie was quite shocking, but not for Alessa herself. It had happened at least once before, several years ago. Lizzy was probably still getting used to knowing that she wasn't real―

_Stop!_ The thought was loud in her mind. _Lizzy's more real than are. She's got a life, friends, a guy that cares for her, a family. What do you have? Your mom, who Billy shot and killed earlier. Gucci, who didn't even think you were alive until today. And Lizzy, who is a part of you. One of three apparently._

The thoughts were hard set in her mind. Lizzy was the one that really needed out of Silent Hill, not her. Lizzy needed to get back to her family, back to her friends, and maybe to actually have a relationship with Billy.

"Alessa," Lizzy snapped her back to reality, saying her name in a sing-song type of way.

"Sorry, just daydreaming."

"Does this place _have_a day?"

Alessa laughed at that question, even if it wasn't a joke.

"Ladies, would you mind getting your asses in the goddamn roller coaster?" Gucci asked with slight amusement in his voice.

"After you," Lizzy motioned to the car.

"No, after you, I insist," Alessa did the same.

"Girls, get in the fucking roller coaster car!" Billy wasn't really shouting, but he was a little irritated.

Alessa and Lizzy got in the car and sat in the back, it lurched forward, eventually moving faster and faster as it kept going.

CARLA―SEVEN THIRTY

"No, no. Thank you Dr. Muldoon," Carla Johnston put the phone down.

Stephanie was sitting at the table, playing with her food.

_One daughter is here, the other's missing with her father._

Stephanie kept playing with her food. Carla gave her a smile when she looked up at her.

"Mommy, when are Daddy and Lizzy coming home?"

"I don't know sweetie, but soon, I hope."

"Mommy, is Lizzy crazy?"

"Why do you say that sweetie?"

"'Cause you keep calling a sy-cy-a-trisk for her. And 'cause of the cuts on her arm."

That was disheartening, hearing Stephanie talk about Elizabeth like that. And to hear her mispronounce the word 'psychiatrist'.

"Sweetie, Lizzy and Daddy will be home soon. Then we can be a whole family together again, okay?"

"Okay, Mommy."

With that, Stephanie finished her food and hopped out of the chair, walking back up to her old bedroom.

It wasn't surprising that Bob had left both their own bedroom as well as Stephanie's alone when they split up. He must have thought they were coming back soon anyway.

_And he was right. We did come back. Because he left._

The whole reason for the divorce in the first place was Elizabeth. Carla couldn't help her own daughter get through what she was feeling. Elizabeth made frequent trips to Silent Hill, which must have calmed her down.

_Or fueled her delusions, just like what Alfred told you._

Another reason she felt she couldn't help Elizabeth was because they had adopted her when they were in Silent Hill fifteen years ago. She was wandering around the town, mainly around the hotel, actually, and they had picked her up and said she was their daughter.

_She _is_ my daughter. Despite the fact that she had no family, despite the fact that she was in a town that had spook stories ranging from Hell to Valhalla, she my daughter. And I love her._

That was the real reason she and Stephanie came back. Elizabeth could take care of herself, except for the fact that she was slowly diving over the mental edge, but she could take care of herself. Elizabeth was somewhat stable.

_Except for her nightmares._

When Bob had left to where ever he had gone, be it Silent Hill or Alaska, Elizabeth had told her about a strange nightmare she had had. Apparently, it was about Silent Hill. About Bob dying in some horrific way that Elizabeth couldn't bare to think about it for too long. When Alfred asked her about it, she couldn't remember that she had even had it.

_Her exact words were "Why would I dream about my dad dying? I know exactly where he is." But she didn't know where he was. We don't either._

The phone was ringing.

"Hello?" she asked, hurriedly.

"Mrs. Johnston, it's Dr. Muldoon."

"What is it? Did they find Elizabeth yet?"

"No, I'm sorry. But a new occurrence has come to my attention."

"What?"

"Police in Silent Hill found your ex-husband. He was in Brookhaven hospital, undergoing psychiatric care. This morning, he was found dead, in a supply room."

"Oh God… Wha―What happened t-to him?"

"The officer that explained it to me said that it was a shotgun blast straight to the face. Security camera footage of that area shows that your daughter was in the room, holding the shotgun."

"Are you saying that Elizabeth killed her own father?"

"Apparently. I've seen the footage. He was pleading for his life when she pulled the trigger."

"Why would she do that?"

"She only said a few words before killing him."

"And what were they?"

"I believe it was something along the lines of 'Why'd you fucking do it? Why'd you fucking do that to me?' or something like that. She wasn't particularly happy to see him."

"God…"

"Did your husband have any history of rape? Or anything of the sort?"

"No. No, and he wouldn't rape his own daughter, why are you asking me this?"

"Could it be that she's referring to her adoption?"

"We've never told her about it, how could she know?"

"How old was she when you adopted her?"

"Two and a half, three."

"It could be a phantom memory of some sort. Something she remembered but couldn't remember when from. Certain adopted children have the capabilities to resurrect these phantom memories."

"Phantom memories from a phantom town…"

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Johnston?"

"We found Elizabeth when we were wandering around Silent Hill fifteen years ago. She was overjoyed to meet someone from outside the town. Hell, I'd say she was overjoyed to _meet_someone. Silent Hill was the ghost town it is today fifteen years ago."

"Then it could be that returning to where she was born brought back certain memories that she didn't want to recall, and hid some along the way. Mrs. Johnston, I assure you that Silent Hill is no ghost town anymore, we have qualified physicians, psychiatrists, and the like as well as police officers, we will find your daughter and bring her back. Then I implore you to seek out the psychiatric help that Elizabeth needs."

"I will. Thank you Doctor."

The other line hung up. Carla sat the phone down again.

_Bob…_

She would break the bad news to Stephanie, but leave out the part about Elizabeth killing him.

_She doesn't need to know that her big sister is crazy…_

GUCCI―SEVEN FORTY-FIVE

Gucci woke up sitting next to a barrel of gasoline.

_What does a church need a barrel of gas for?_

They had reached the Balkin Church in under an hour of when they stopped the roller coaster car, forcefully. With the exception of the Reachers (weird things that had one long arm and one short one, Dave had christened the name) and a couple of the Satin things that he and Billy had found earlier, there was nothing on the streets to be afraid of.

The church was covered in rust, it looked, and Alessa and Elizabeth were inside, checking it out. Dave had woken up on the coaster car, scared to death. Billy was hefting the shotgun, watching out for any other unpleasant welcoming committees. Gucci had taken the time to actually have a nap.

_And a hell of a nap it was…_

He had a nightmare, not unlike the ones he had as a kid.

_With weird fire sprouting up everywhere around me and people chanting that I had to die…_

"Where are the girls?"

"Still in the church," it was Dave who answered.

"Billy, how much is left in the shotgun?"

"'Bout three in it and one whole box of six left."

"What about you, Dave, how much you have left in your handgun?"

"Five and maybe ten more in the box."

"Elizabeth's got my handgun, and I've got the spare ammo, that's about twelve plus whatever's still in it."

As if on cue, Elizabeth and Alessa walked out of the church door.

"Nothing," reported Elizabeth, holding out the handgun. Alessa had the same look on her face as Elizabeth, one of disappointment.

Gucci took the gun, checked the magazine, eight left.

"What's down this road?" he asked Alessa, pointing down Bloch street.

"Ummmm, the sewer entrance, Midwich, and an old school bus."

Midwich, the old elementary school. His old house was over that way.

"Tom," Alessa said in a sing-song voice, similar to the one Elizabeth used on her back at the amusement park.

"Sorry. All right, Midwich it is. Let's saddle up."

They started walking down Bloch street. A small noise came from one of the houses to the left. He held up his hand to stop them.

_Something or someone hiding in that house._

"Dave," he whispered, "what do you make of that sound?"

"Not loud enough to be a Reacher."

Gucci started to walk closer to the noise maker. He pulled a flashlight out from his back pocket. Not the kind that cops usually carry on them, it was a pocket Maglite, it was slightly brighter.

The creature burst out of the bush on the side of the house. It was small, about the size of a small dog or a cat, and it had claws on two of its four feet. It scratched at his face, leaving at least two deep scars. Blood was pouring into his eyes as he tried to throw the thing to the ground. When he managed it, the thing looked up at him. It had the face of raccoon that was just ran over repeatedly, and when it opened its mouth, it let out a shrill screaming noise that made Gucci cover his ears. He trained the gun on the thing anyway and squeezed the trigger, putting a bullet into the crushed-looking skull. It looked at him again, letting out that shrill scream again.

_What the hell?!_

Gucci shot it again, in the same spot. It didn't do anything.

"Fuck me…"

Billy ran over to it and slammed the butt of the shotgun down onto its head, knocking it down but still not killing it. It was then that Gucci noticed what the rest of the body looked like. Or lack-thereof.

Its front legs came down from its neck, and the back legs not too far from there. The tail, if one could call it that, was as short pinkie tow, and about as wide around. The body itself was as big around as a fist. The thing was smaller than a cat, but about as big around as a puppy.

Billy brought the butt of the shotgun down on its head again, crushing the already crushed looking creature and planting it on the ground. Gucci shot it in the face again, slightly above where he put the first bullets. He thought it was dead.

"Damn…" Gucci was slightly out of breath. He touched the cuts that the thing gave him. Both were deep, one extended from just below his hairline on the right side of his face to just above his nose. The other was parallel to that one, on the left, going very close to his left eye. He found that it was hard to open the left eye lid, so he kept it closed.

"You all right?" Dave asked.

"I'm fine. At least I didn't take a bullet to the chest. Limited use of the left eye though."

"Do you want me to take the lead?"

"No. Alessa and Elizabeth. They have better memory of the town anyway," well that, and that they were basically inseparable. They did look like twins, had the same voice, acted the same, and probably thought along similar lines as well.

_They are the same person, don't forget that._

He almost had, but he knew that it didn't matter all that much.

There was some blood seeping into the right eye.

_Damn thing musta hit more than I thought._

He reached up to wipe the blood, it was still gushing slightly. Gucci pulled out a cloth handkerchief and held it to his forehead.

Another one of those things was in wait just down the road from the first. It let out the shrill scream just before Billy pumped a shotgun shell into it. That killed it instantly.

"Where are we?" Gucci asked as they came to a very large hole in the ground.

"Midwich street. But this hole wasn't here a couple of days ago," Alessa answered.

"Has anything like this happened before?" he asked.

"Usually when I'm trying to get out of the town."

"Does the town know we're trying to leave?"

"I don't know. I don't really know if _the town_knows anything."

"Shit. All right," he coughed. There was blood, "we need a new plan. Dave? Billy? What do you think?"

"We need to get to that school," Dave commented, "Alessa said earlier that she spent some of her childhood there, maybe there are some clues as to what happened to this place."

"Yeah, I spent my childhood there. A crappy childhood that I don't wanna revisit."

"Wasn't it your idea to go to the school in the first place?" Billy asked.

"No, it was Tom's. But it was the better of the two choices that we could actually do. The sewers are gross, long, and only lead back to the amusement park. But mainly the gross part," that was something Gucci had expected to hear out of a teenage girl's mouth.

"What about that old school bus?" Elizabeth asked.

"There's nothing in it. Just a couple of bodies."

"Then we keep going for the school," he said, "where are any other routes?"

Alessa paused for a little bit, trying to think of an alternative.

"We can go back down Bloch and then go down Levin street to Bradbury. That'll take us around this block and right back to the school."

"Okay. Let's do it," David started to walk back down the street. The ground opened up in front of him.

"Dave!" Gucci screamed. Elizabeth and Alessa crouched down, Billy was ready to move. Gucci himself raised his handgun. Dave was swallowed up by the ground.

_Goddamnit…_

DAVID―SEVEN FIFTY-THREE

David felt himself fall about a half second before it happened. After that, he blacked out. When he woke up, he was in a sewer, it looked like.

"David..." came a voice from somewhere.

"Who is it?" David asked weakly.

"Come, David..."

"Where are you?"

"David..."

"Answer me, where the hell are you?!"

"Come, please..."

David walked forward, toward where he thought the voice was coming from. The voice was quiet now, not coming from anywhere.

_Damn it, voice, where the hell are you?!_

He followed the tunnel in front of him, but it kept going for miles.

"David..."

The voice was directly in front of him.

_C'mon, c'mon..._

He ran, toward the sound―

―and he found what he never thought he'd find, even in this weird ass place: a giant plant.

"What the fuck?"

The plant began to move, it whipped out a tentacle and slamed it into David's chest, pushing him onto his back. The little girl Alessa was standing over him.

"Hello, David."

"Wha―"

"I'm glad you could meet me for lunch."

"You―"

"I brought you and your friends to Silent Hill. I wanted you help me."

"Help―"

"I need to know if people can die in Silent Hill."

ALESSA―SEVEN FIFTY-NINE

Alessa wiped Gucci's eye with a torn off part of her sweater.

_Man, that's a lot of blood._

She forced away the urge to puke, even with all she'd seen in Silent Hill for most of her life, she still couldn't take blood and eye juice coming from the same place.

"What's wrong?" Gucci asked her.

"Nothing, nothing. I guess I'm just tired."

"Oh, okay. Bill, whaddya see down there?"

"Nothing, nada, zilch, zip, not even shit."

"Elizabeth, what do you see around us?"

"Nothing. Just houses."

"What about Midwich?"

"We can get there. We still gonna go there, even with David―somewhere?" Alessa asked.

"We don't have much choice, do we?" Gucci answered.

"No, I guess we don't."

"We'll find Dave, but we need to secure an escape route right now."

"Why don't you guys go?" Lizzy said from Alessa's left, "I'll go find David."

"No, Elizabeth. We all need to be here, otherwise one of us may die and the rest'll never know."

"Then me and Alessa can go. We know close to everything about Silent Hill, and we can take care of ourselves."

"I said 'no'. If one of you leaves, Bill will take the time to try and find you."

"What?" Billy was surprised by that.

"After everything that Elizabeth did, do you think I'd be surprised if you did?"

"No."

"Right. We stick together. We'll try and find some form of communication once we're inside Midwich, but until then we stay close."

"It doesn't matter if we do find something in there," Alessa said, "the radio wouldn't work because of the fog."

"How does the fog fuck that stuff up?" Lizzy asked.

"I don't know. I just live here, I don't know everything about the place."

"Let's saddle up, people," Gucci stood up and started walking toward Midwich, around the hole that David was sucked into.

_I hope he's all right._

Alessa knew that some things in Silent Hill were deadly, and some were deadlier. Anything that could put a hole in the ground that looked like it lead to the abyss was probably pretty deadly.

As they continued walking, Alessa thought she heard something like talking.

"What's wrong?" Lizzy asked.

"Nothing. I thought I heard something."

"You probably did. It was probably a Shrieker or something."

"I don't know. Probably."

Alessa felt faint, then fell to the ground.

_What the hell?_

"Alessa!" she felt Lizzy grab her and hold her up.

"I'm okay, I'm okay."

"You don't look okay. Elizabeth, what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. Alessa," Lizzy held up some fingers, "how many fingers am I holding up?"

"I can't tell, it's blurry. I think I see four."

"I was holding up five, but at least you didn't say six."

"Right."

"Why don't you two go on ahead, I'll stay here with her," Lizzy was looking up at Billy and Gucci, or at least that's what Alessa thought she saw.

"You two hole up in a house or something. We'll be back in a little while."

"Okay."

Alessa heard Billy and Gucci walk away, then she felt Lizzy dragging her somewhere.

_Damn it, Lizzy, pick me up._

"Lizzy, can you pick me up and lean me against something?"

"I did. You're leaning on a house."

"Oh."

"We're gonna go inside and I'm gonna lay you on a couch or something, okay?"

"Yeah."

Alessa felt Lizzy carrying her into the house that she was appearently leaning on. She couldn't feel anything other than her.

_Wonder why. I can't feel shit, other than Lizzy, probably means something about our connection or something._

"Alessa, you awake?"

"Trying to be, I can't feel anything other than you right now, can't see anything, where am I?"

"Laying on a couch."

"Good. I'm glad I can still hear you."

"Me too."

"You know how weird I feel right now? I'm talking to somebody who I know as much as I know myself. It makes sense, we are the same person, but it just feels weird to me."

"Same here," Alessa smiled inwardly.

_I knew you were gonna say that._

"Lizzy, do you think we're gonna make it outta here?"

"I hope so. I want to explain stuff to my mom, and see my little sister again. I hope they're okay. I'm sure they've been through hell with me and with my dad's disappearence, and then with mine. I wonder if―I wonder if I'll ever be able to remember everything that I've forgotten because I came here."

"I hope you do. I wanna know why you killed your dad."

"Me too," Lizzy's voice was soft, like she felt regret for doing what she didn't know what she did.

_Like I can blame her. She killed her dad for some reason, and she didn't even know it was him._

Alessa started nodding off to sleep a second or so later, feeling very tired.

ELIZABETH―EIGHT O'SIX

Elizabeth watched as Alessa fell asleep.

_Wonder how she feels._

She could probably never guess, but Alessa probably felt like she was useless.

_I kinda feel that way. Must be because we're the same person._

"Wow, now it's kinda boring," she said aloud, to no one in particular. She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket, going to the games menu and playing a round of solitare.

"Hey, Lizzy?"

"I thought you were asleep."

"I can't sleep, my head hurts too much."

"Oh. What is it?"

"What are your parents like?"

"My mom is really nice. She and my dad _used_to argue all the time, before they got divorced. And my dad i―_was _okay. He was until he and Mom got divorced, then he got really―"

"What?"

"I think I know why I killed him..."

"What?"

"I think he raped me."

"Why would he do that?"

"I don't know. That must be why I killed him. I think he raped me"

"Wow. That would be a reason for me to kill my father, if I knew him."

"I've gotta go back to Brookhaven, c'mon."

"What?" Alessa sat up, apparently regaining feeling and awareness, "we can't go back to Brookhaven, Tom'll get pissed."

"Alessa, we've got to."

"Look, there's a hospital on this side of the town, too, Alchemilla. They shared records with Brookhaven, we'll go there."

"Okay."

Close to an hour and several stretches of road later, Elizabeth and Alessa were standing outside Alchemillia hospital.

"So, do we go in?" Elizabeth asked.

"Duh. Look, it won't be that bad. I know this place well, I was born here."

"Okay. You're sure that this place and Brookhaven shared records?"

"Positive. Let's go in."

"Right."

Elizabeth and Alessa walked into the building. Directly in front of them was an elevator, and to the right of that were several doors along the hallway. The place was covered in blood.

_Oh my god, just like Brookhaven._

"Oh, shit," Alessa breathed next to her.

"What?"

"The darkness is here."

"What is this shit anyway?"

"It's Silent Hill's way of telling the people inside that somebody's gonna die."

"Who's gonna die?"

"I dunno."

"Oh shit."

Elizabeth walked forward, looking around at the blood covered walls.

_Damn..._

A noise distracted her―her cellphone was emitting static.

_What the shit?_

"What's that?" Alessa asked.

"My phone."

"Why's it doing that?"

"I dunno. Maybe―" Elizabeth was cut off by a scraping noise coming from directly ahead. As the scraping got closer, the cellphone's static got more intense.

_Just like before..._

Elizabeth held up her phone and looked at the screen. It was going haywire. Grotesque faces were appearing and disappearing―some looking scared, some looking _horrified_.

"Oh my _god_..."

Elizabeth lowered her phone at the sound of Alessa's voice.

Pyramid Head was standing at the other end of the hallway, like some crazy bogeyman.

"You..." it said, pointing at―

―Elizabeth.

Suddenly, the space between the two twin girls and Pyramid Head was nonexistant―it had moved in the blink of an eye―and Pyramid Head was grabbing Elizabeth by the neck. She tried wriggling out of its grasp, but it was too strong. Its hand covered her entire neck.

Then, two seconds later, Elizabeth knew why Pyramid Head had said _you _moments before.

It was answering Elizabeth's own question.

"_Who's gonna die?"_

ALESSA―NINE SEVENTEEN

Alessa wanted to throw up when she heard the intensely loud noise that Lizzy's neck made once Pyramid Head twisted its hand. The noise almost sounded like wet lips smacking, but it also sounded like a subtle gunshot.

She covered her mouth, as if she _was_going to puke, then she tumbled back down onto her ass.

_That thing... Lizzy..._she thought, looking up at it in amazement, fear, and sorrow.

Then, like everything else in her world, Pyramid Head disappeared. With it went all the blood and rust. Alchemilla Hospital was returned to as normal as it would be. With one exception.

Lizzy's corpse.

Right in front of her.

For the first time in about nine hours, Alessa was alone.

She scrambled back against a wall, hugged her knees to her chest, and began to shake.

For the first time in seventeen years, Alessa was afraid of Silent Hill.

DAVID―SOME TIME AGO

"_David..."_

"_Who is it?"_

"_Come, David..."_

"_Where are you?"_

"_David..."_

"_Answer me, where the hell are you?!"_

"_Come, please..."_

"_David..."_

"_What the fuck?"_

"_Hello, David."_

"_Wha―"_

"_I'm glad you could meet me for lunch."_

"_You―"_

"_I brought you and your friends to Silent Hill. I wanted you help me."_

"_Help―"_

"_I need to know if people can die in Silent Hill."_

DAVID―NINE TWENTY-SIX

David awoke in a room not unlike those at Brookhaven. At first, that was where he thought he was, until he saw the map on the wall with the word ALCHEMILLA large print on the top.

_What the hell happened?_

He stood up and walked over to the door. He turned the doorknob and walked out into a hallway. There were three doors to his left, and what looked to be an elevator to his right. He decided to take his chances and walked over to the elevator. The doors opened, and he stepped inside. He pressed the 1 button and the elevator began to descend.

_So far, so good._

The doors opened on the first floor. He noticed two things.

One: Alessa, cowering on the floor.

Two: A female body, three feet away from her.

As David got closer to the body, he realized who it was.

Elizabeth.

_What... the... fuck?_

"She's dead..." Alessa had spoken so softly that, at first, David had trouble believing she'd spoken at all. Her next sentence was much louder. "She's dead, and it's my fault..."

He sat down next to her and put his arm around her. "C'mon, Alessa, snap out of it."

"There's nothing to snap out of," she said through tears. "It's my fault..."

"Whaddya mean?"

"I don't know... But it was my idea to come here... That's why it's my fault..."

"What happened?"

"It was him... Pyramid Head... he showed up when everything was bloody and rusty, then he appeared right in front of us, grabbed Lizzy, and snapped her neck like a twig. Lizzy's dead and it was _my fucking fault!_"

The last part, she shouted. David almost had to cover his ears. Alessa muttered an apology once she saw his reaction.

"C'mon, Alessa, let's go..."

David helped her to her feet and toward the door. Then Alessa stopped, walked back to Elizabeth's corpse. She picked it up and grabbed the cellphone that was still clutched in Elizabeth's right hand. "We need to bury her," she said.

David only nodded.

Once all was done, David watched as Gucci and Billy walked up to them. Alessa was on her knees in front of the grave site that she'd chosen for Elizabeth. They'd taken a cinder block from somewhere nearby and carved her name into it, then set it at the head of her grave.

"What happened?" Gucci whispered to David.

"Alessa said Pyramid Head killed her."

He watched and Billy knelt down next to Alessa. He couldn't hear what they said to each other, but he knew they were speaking. After a few moments, Billy pulled Alessa into his arms, and the two embraced.

_We'll get out of here. No more have to die._

GUCCI―NINE FORTY-SEVEN

Gucci looked through the refrigerator of the house they'd decided to hole up in for the time being. The only thing there was three 20oz bottles of Sunny D.

_Well, the others'll be wll off..._he thought.

He took the three bottles out and handed them to Billy, David and Alessa. When she saw that her's was the last, Alessa looked up at him and asked, "Where's yours?"

"There were only three in the fridge."

She held her's out for him. At first, he pushed it away, then she said, "I can't drink anything right now..." After that, he reluctantly took it.

"So," Billy said after taking a large gulp, "What's the plan?"

"Alessa, where do we go from here?" Gucci asked, in response to Billy's question.

"Well... I'm pretty sure we take Sagan street to Bloch street―or, wait, no, I think they merge..."

"Wait, you _think_?"

"Well, I just saw my twin sister die a little bit ago! How the hell do you _think_I'm feeling right now!" Gucci felt his self esteem drop by feet. Alessa, however, kept on talking, "And, the goddamn street plan of this goddamn town is the _least_of my goddamn concerns right now!"

"You finished yet?" Gucci asked. "Look, I don't know what you're feeling right now and I personally don't give a flying _fuck_. But if we don't get out of here as soon as possible, we'll _all_die."

He watched as Alessa's eyes widened.

_I struck something..._

"Now, do they merge or what?"

"I'm pretty sure they do..." Alessa's voice was as small as a little girl getting scolded would sound.

"All right. Where do we go from there?"

"We turn right on Bachman road, go straight from there, and we should end up at the observation deck that overlooks the forest. From there, we just head on out."

"Okay. Now, I suggest we get our asses in gear and head the hell on out of this shithole."

DAVID―TEN O'SEVEN

David walked alongside Gucci. Billy and Alessa were behind them. It was rather obvious, with Elizabeth gone, that Billy and Alessa only had each other.

_Maybe she'll be his fall-back plan..._

David thought about his own previous attempts at relationships. None had lasted very long. Then, his train of thought made him laugh―he was here to report on a missing persons case about Robert W. Johnston, Elizabeth's father. Now, almost twelve hours later, he was walking through a ghost town, Elizabeth and her father were both dead, and he hadn't taken down a single word.

_Some reporter I turned out to be..._he thought.

He nearly laughed again. His dream job back when he was in high school, and once he got out of this shithole, he was going to drop it and find somebody to spend the rest of his life with. He'd seen enough in Silent Hill to make him wish he'd retired before he'd started his job.

David brought his focus back on the path ahead. They'd just turned onto Bachman. It was then that he noticed something incredibly wrong.

The street was dark. There was no sign of anything except his companions and the fog. And, actually, the fog was heavier.

There was something about the place... some kind of familiarity. He walked forward a little, noticing a small piece of wood on the ground. He hesitated a little, then picked it up and looked up again. There was a noise from behind them.

_What the hell is that?_ he thought.

He looked behind them, seeing a large dark shadow behind Billy and Alessa. He turned and looked even longer at it, then he saw what it was.

"Dave, what's wrong?" Gucci asked.

_Oh, shit… _

"Everybody, I think it's time to _run!_"

He started to back up, then turned and ran.

Pyramid Head was chasing them.

It caught up to him―just him―and picked him up and slammed him to the ground. He felt dirt on every side of him, despite the fact that he was in the middle of Bachman street.

Then, the familiarity of his situation hit him just as Pyramid Head's insanely large knife/sword did.

He was in the middle of the nightmare he'd been having for weeks.

_No,_ he thought, _not the middle... the end..._

He looked up and saw Pyramid Head standing there, the noises coming from his mouth sounded like laughing. Laughing that was as loud as he was powerful. In the distance, he heard Alessa shouting his name.

_Sorry, kid..._ was his last thought.

GUCCI―TEN SIXTEEN

Gucci started shooting at the monster just as soon as David breathed his last. He remembered what he was thinking after they left the house.

_We'll _all_ make it._

_We'll all_ had just been reduced to _Me and the kids_.

The handgun dry clicked. His last magazine was in his back pocket. He quickly pulled it out and slammed it home, then he was unloading on the murdering creature. At first, he was wondering why Bill or Alessa weren't firing the other gun, but then he remembered that Billy had lost the second one in Midwich once the blood and rust started taking over.

_Damn it..._

The gun dry clicked again.

No more ammo this time.

Gucci thought quickly, then grabbed Bill by the arm. "Get her the hell outta here, got that?" he said to him, pushing him back toward Alessa.

"What about you?!" Bill sounded hysterical.

Gucci looked back at Pyramid Head and watched it walk toward him. "Just get her _outta here!_"

"Tom!" Alessa shrieked.

g_Go!_"

He heard Bill grab Alessa and start running. With any hope, they'd be out of this haunted hellhole town and back into the real world.

He thought quickly, the plan formulating in his head as he carried out the actions he'd decided upon. First, he ran around Pyramid Head and grabbed the piece of wood that David had dropped seconds before his death. As he ducked under the big blade, he nearly lost his head. Second, he threw the wood at Pyramid Head's right leg. The splintered wood hit a wound that Gucci hadn't even seen until seconds before the hit.

_Coleman..._

The revelation hit him like a kick in the nuts―Stanley-The-Deadman-Coleman was _some-how_ Pyramid Head, or at least he'd been changed into a creature like it.

"How right you are, Mr. Gucci."

He knew _that_ voice before it was spoken. He turned around and saw the vision of Alessa at five years old. She was standing there, looking at him like he was some sort of parental figure.

_Or a stranger._

gWhat the fuck _are_ you?" he asked the little monster.

"I'm this town. Ever since my mother burned me to death, I've pulled people into this town who need to pay for what they've done."

"And that's who you started with?"

"No. I started with others, to try out my newfound powers. But since I killed Mom, I've had a hell of a lot of fun with all the other sinners out there."

"What about Elizabeth? What about David?"

"The girl was connected to me, and I wanted to be whole again. And the man, he didn't like me."

"What about me?"

"Who said I was going to kill you? How do you know I don't just want company?"

Gucci pointed to Stanley/Pyramid Head behind him. "You've got that _freak_."

"That's true. And I've got all the souls of those I've killed. I've punished a lot of bad people, Mr. Gucci," as the girl spoke, it seemed to Gucci that thousands of ghost-like people emerged behind her, as if entering this plane of existence, "and most of them are people you wouldn't do anything to. Like him," she pointed to a man in a green jacket and blue jeans, "he killed his wife, then blamed it on her terminal illness. Or him," this was a man with long, shaggy hair, wearing a brown coat and black pants, "who just wanted to get back to his mother. His only problem was how he did it. He killed nineteen people, and the police didn't do anything to him. Of course, they did think he was dead."

Gucci continued to look at the little girl and the ghostly people. As he did, Pyramid Head walked around to his front.

gSo you see, Mr. Gucci, I need to kill you for your ignorance. You let these people get away with their crimes, and forced me to punish them. Now it's time _I_ punished _you_."

Pyramid Head had to use both hands to raise that giant blade of his. Gucci prepared for what was going to happen.

"Don't worry, you'll have company," the girl said, then nodded.

Thomas Gucci understood Silent Hill in the moment that he was bisected.

Silent Hill was Hell.

BILLY―ELEVEN TWENTY-THREE

"Billy! Stop!" Alessa shouted at him. He just kept on running. "Billy!"

Finally, he stopped once they were as far away from Silent Hill as he could run.

_Jesus... Christ... Jesus... Christ..._

"Billy? You okay?" Alessa sounded out of breath when she asked the question. Billy imagined that she should be―they'd just run nearly five miles.

"As close... to okay... as I'll be until... we get the fuck away from that place..."

He fell down on his ass in the middle of the road, trying to catch his breath. Alessa fell down on her knees beside him. "I just... wanna go home..." she said, as much out of breath as he was.

"Whaddya mean? Home? I thought... Silent Hill was your home?"

gIt _was_... but it's not anymore..."

Billy looked up at her and saw her face. As much like Lizzy's as it had always been. Almost as if Alessa _was_ Lizzy. The irony of the situation was that Lizzy was really Alessa. Now, Lizzy was dead and Alessa was outside of that town.

"So, whadda we do now?" Billy asked her.

"I dunno... maybe we should both spend some time in that rubber room you were in until last night..."

Billy was confused. How could Alessa know about that? "Did Lizzy tell you about that?"

g_No_, you called... me... wait..."

gNo, I called _Lizzy_."

"Then why do I remember that?" Alessa scratched her head.

"Maybe... well, you and Lizzy were one and the same, maybe you got her memories when she died."

"I don't know..."

Billy heard noises coming from the direction of Silent Hill. He stood up, then pulled Alessa up with him. "We gotta go, _now_."

They both started running again.

BILLY―TWELVE O'EIGHT

Billy held Alessa's hand most of the way. He had to admit, it felt just like Lizzy's had felt.

_And if Alessa has Lizzy's memories, then she remembers the kiss..._ he thought. Then he wanted to smack himself in the head. Relationships were the _last_ thing he wanted to worry about at a time like this.

The sun was something you could learn to miss. Billy had been in an insane asylum for the past few days, and when he got out, it was night time. Now, however, he couldn't help but smile in the rays the sun was giving off.

Alessa's hand was warm in his. And every so often, she'd look at him and smile. He liked her smile, just like he liked her hand warmth.

"So... what's new in Ashfield?" she asked him, once they sat down on the side of the road and took a rest.

"Well... an apartment building closed down. Some freaky shit was happening there, I guess. Couple of the tenants got murdered."

"Oh..."

"Other than that, I don't really know anything. I wasn't there for very long."

"I see."

"Got anything else to ask me?"

"Wha?"

"Anything else?"

"Oh. No."

"Nothing like, 'what are your parents like' or 'what have you been doing recently'?"

gWell, I know what your parents are like, and I know you've been locked up in that nut house recently. And, I know that if we tell anybody about what happened here, we'll _both_ be put in a nut house."

gWhat _can_ we tell them?"

"I don't know..."

Alessa leaned against Billy and leaned her head on his shoulder.

_Damn, this girl's warm..._

"Billy?"

"What?"

"You do know that you can talk to me like you did with Lizzy, right?"

He didn't answer for a second, then said, "Yeah, I do."

"Good..." she yawned. "Since you're the only cute boy at Lizzy's school..."

Billy laughed. "Honestly, I think I'm gonna drop out... I've seen too much shit to go back and try to have a normal life."

gWell," Alessa stood up and stretched, "I'm gonna try, seeing as how I've never really _had_ a normal life. Unless you count Lizzy's memories."

Billy stood up and did just the same. "If you're gonna try, _I'm_ gonna try."

She smiled. "Thanks," then leaned up and kissed him.

"Okay, let's get going," he said, waving a hand the way they were going.

A few more hours on the road, and they got to a roadblock. There were local police and state troopers patrolling it. One of them saw the two teenagers and shouted, "People!" to his compatriots. Alessa waved to them.

The guy who looked to be in charged ushered them to a police car and got them on the road. Nobody spoke to anybody. Alessa fell asleep against Billy's shoulder, but that was about it. Hours later, they arrived at the Ashfield Sanitarium.

_Great... they're gonna lock both of us in there._

Billy woke Alessa up, then they were both lead to a room on the second floor of the building. Dr. Muldoon was waiting for them there.

"William. And, Ms. Elizibeth Johnston, I presume?" he asked, nodding toward Alessa.

"Yeah, that's me," Alessa agreed with him. Billy was almost speechless.

"Both your parents have been notified, and they'll be here within a few hours. Now, would either of you wish to tell me what happened in Silent Hill?"

Billy was the first to speak up. "You'd never believe us."

"Now, now, William, I'm a man of imagination. Please, tell me."

gNo, doc, he's serious," Alessa backed Billy up. "You wouldn't believe it. _I_ barely believe it."

"William, what happened to that police officer? Officer Gucci?"

"He... died..." Alessa answered for him. Billy was grateful.

"Died? How?"

"That's where you won't believe us," Billy answered. "That's what we were talking about."

"I see... please, try me?" He looked straight at Alessa. "You first, Ms. Gillespie."

Alessa's eyes widened. "How could you know that?"

"I guess I should explain myself first. That might be a little bit more productive. William, you know me as Dr. Herman Muldoon. In actuallity, my name is Dr. Herman Kaufman. My brother, Michael Kaufman, once worked at Alchemilla hospital in Silent Hill. He developed a hallucinigenic drug which, once given to a group of people in an already psychotic cult, made them even more so. That cult was the Order. Your mother was their leader."

"Dr. Kaufman didn't say he had a brother."

"No, I should think not. We were over ten years apart, and never got much along."

"So," Billy began, "how did you recognize Alessa?"

"Her mother spoke very highly of her to my brother. My brother spoke very highly of her to me."

"So, then you'll believe us?"

"I'll believe that you think you saw what you saw, but it could have been a byproduct of my brother's hallucenigen." He took a drink from a glass of water that Billy had been eying for the past few minutes. "So, tell me."

"Well, I don't know what happened to David before he met up with Lizzy, but after that, they stayed together pretty much the whole time. Then, Lizzy got kinda sick when she first went into Brookhaven―probably because I was there―and she passed out. Then, Lizzy woke up, met up with me, and we both met up with David. Then Billy and Tom showed up, that _thing_ took Lizzy away with it, we got Lizzy back, then Tom shot Stanley, then we―"

"Explain 'that thing' for me please, as well as Stanley."

"Well, 'that thing' was a person with a giant pyramid shaped helmet over his head, wearing a butcher's smock, and carrying a giant sword-like thing. Stanley was Stanley Coleman, a crazy guy that used to have a crush on me. Instead, he married someone else, then killed her. Then he was put in Brookhaven for a second time."

"I see. Go on."

"Okay... well, once all of us were together, we started looking for a way out of Silent Hill. We went everywhere... Lakeside Amusement Park, Alchemilla..."

"Midwich," Billy added.

"Eventually, Billy and I just took the main road out of Old Silent Hill and ended up at that roadblock, where we were driven here."

"And what happened to Elizabeth, Officer Gucci, and this David person?"

"They were all killed by Pyramid Head..."

"Pyrami―I can assume that's the 'thing' you mentioned earlier?"

"Yeah."

gAnd, this, uh, Pyramid Head was the _only_ creature you saw?"

"No, there were others. They just weren't all that important. I mean, they scratched us up, and everything, but they didn't really stall us."

"I see. And, how exactly do you know what happened between when Elizabeth was alone in Silent Hill to when she met up with David?"

"I have her memories."

"Elaborate, please."

"Lizzy and I were the same person. We were split between the one that hated my mom, and the one that couldn't remember her. Lizzy was the one that couldn't remember. Then, after Lizzy died, I guess all her memories then ended up in me."

"Well... that's a very interesting story. Do you have anything to add, William?"

"No. No, Alessa pretty much summed it up."

"So, nothing happened between when you and Officer Gucci left and when you two met up with Alessa, Elizabeth and David?"

"Nothing other than us exploring a fog-filled town and getting our asses lost a couple hundred times."

Muldoon―or, Kaufman―took another drink from that glass of water. Then he stood up and walked to the door. "Your parents will be in here in a few moments."

ALESSA―SIX O'NINE

Alessa stood up from her chair and walked over to the wall. She leaned against it and watched the door.

"What're you doing that for?" Billy asked.

gBecause... I mean, I _know_ Lizzy's parents, but they're really still strangers to me."

"I know. So, what are you going to say to them?"

"I don't know..."

Alessa stood up straight once the door opened. The first two people to walk in were Billy's parents, then Lizzy's mom and little sister.

"Billy," his dad began, "what the hell happened? Why'd you go back to that town?"

"Dad, look, I'm pretty sure that I'm back to normal, and then..." Billy was cut off by his dad.

gBack to normal?! Now you're saying _back to normal_, when before you said that you weren't crazy!"

"Mr. Harrison, Billy's telling the truth," Alessa stood up for him.

"Look, Elizabeth, please don't―" Billy's dad looked at her and cut himself off. "What happened to your hair?"

"Oh, that, I, uh, dyed it..." Alessa had forgotten that small detail―she and Lizzy were both natrual brunettes, but Alessa had dyed her hair blonde years before.

"When, sweetie?" Lizzy's mom asked.

"Yesterday morning..."

gLook," Billy stood up. "Mom, Dad, I'm _fine_ now, okay? I was screwed up before, but now I'm _fine_." He looked over at Alessa. "Lizzy knows that."

Lizzy's mom walked over to Alessa. At first, she thought that the woman could tell the difference between her and Lizzy―despite the fact that there _was_ no difference―then she asked, "Lizzy, sweetie, can we talk out in the hallway?"

"Yeah..."

The three of them―Alessa, Lizzy's mom (Carla) and her little sister (Stephanie)― walked out into the hallway, where Carla knelt down to look Stephanie in the eye. "Sweetheart, didn you need to use the bathroom?"

"Yeah, Mommy, but you told me to wait."

"It's okay, you can go now. It's just that way," she pointed.

"Okay, Mommy... I'll be right back."

Carla stood up and looked Alessa in the eye. "Lizzy never came back from Silent Hill, did she?"

"In a sense... no."

"What does that mean?"

"You know about some of the ghost stories about Silent Hill, right?"

"Yes."

"One of them is about this girl who splits herself in two. One stays in Silent Hill, the other goes and has a normal life."

"You're the one that stayed? Lizzy was the one that had the normal life?"

"Yeah. Until..."

"What happened to her?"

"Lizzy died."

"So, what's your name, then?"

"Alessa Gillespie. But, y'know, I can change my name, and I've got all of Lizzy's memories."

"How?"

"When she died, they all transferred over to me, I guess."

"So, what happened to Lizzy after Stephie and I left?"

"It's blurry..."

"Please... I need to know why Lizzy would kill her father."

gWell... from what I remember―or, what _Lizzy_ remembered―was that her dad started drinking, then...okay, this is where it gets _really_ blurry... almost like Lizzy tried blocking it out... Lizzy went to Silent Hill―_again―_and spent a night there. Then, her dad followed her, and―can you _please_ put the pieces together from here, because this is _really_ making me feel bad right now..."

"I think I can. Look, Alessa, I'd be willing to bring you into our home as a replacement for Lizzy. Hopefully, Stephie doesn't ask too much about it, but I might not be able to keep her away from the truth."

gI understand... Look, Ms. Johnston, I understand that I can't _really_ replace Lizzy, but I'll try my best."

"Lizzy's only been missing a day―and if you're there, it's like she never really went away."

Alessa threw her arms around Carla, she felt tears start running down her cheeks. "Thanks, Mom."

"Your welcome, sweetie..."

SIX WEEKS LATER

ELIZABETH―SEVEN O'FOUR PM

Elizabeth Johnston―formerly Alessa Gillespie― laid down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling.

_Wonder how Billy's doing..._ she thought.

She stood up and walked over to her phone. She dialed his number and listened to the phone ring for a little while before his dad finally answered.

gHello?"

"Hi, Mr. Harrison, it's Lizzy."

gOh, okay. I'll put Bill on."

"Thanks..." she waited a few moments, then Billy answered.

gHi, Lizzy."

"Hey, Billy. I'm just calling to see how you were doing."

gFine. No nightmares since we got back."

"That's good..."

gAnd... hey, I had an idea. How good can you draw?"

"As good as the old Lizzy could."

gCan you come over tomorrow?"

"We have school tomorrow."

gOh, yeah... how about you see if you can go to my homeroom tomorrow?"

"Sure. Why, got some comic book that you want to do?"

gYeah. And I want you to draw it."

"Okay..."

gWhat?"

gDoes this have _anything_ to do with Silent Hill?"

gA little. It's just what inspired me."

"Okay..."

gThanks, Lizzy."

"Yup..."

gHey, what'sa matter?"

"Well...I'm just bored. I did my homework right as soon as I got home today... now I got nothing to do."

gSorry."

"That's okay. Hey, can I come over tonight?"

gSure. How come?"

"What? I can't spend time with my boyfriend?"

gOh, yeah, sorry."

"That's okay. I'll see you in a little while."

Elizabeth hung up the phone and grabbed her bookbag. She told her mom what she was going to do. As she was just about out the door, her mom asked, "Can you turn on the radio on your way out?"

"Sure, Mom."

She flipped on the radio and listened to the end of a news break.

gTwo hikers were found dead on the outskirts of Silent Hill. One of them was identified as Toluca County Police Officer Thomas Gucci..."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Well, this author's note is a long time coming. I wanted to put it at the beginning of chapter 1, but forgot. Oh, well. For those of you who want to know the genesis of this story, I started it in 2006 and finished it in 2009. Yep, three years. Three goddamn years of writing this story, which probably isn't even consistent anymore. I hope it is, but shit happens. Well, that's it. I know, I know, a shitty author's note. Oh well.


End file.
